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Google News To Shut Down In Spain On December 16th
An anonymous reader writes The news aggregation services offered by Google is set to be no longer available for Spain, starting December 16th, 2014. The decision of Google comes as response to new Spanish legislation that gives publishers the right to claim compensation for republishing any part of their content. This follows news of services of startup Uber being forbidden in countries like Spain as well as Germany and some city councils worldwide like Delhi, or other services like AirBnb being put under pressure to cope with local laws in other jurisdictions.
or go out of business as soon as they notice that more and more people are no longer finding their news site.
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Is Slashdot paying Reuters and the BBC for the stories summarized and linked to here? Do you think they should be?
No they're not. Why did News International raise a paywall on their sites? Because site advertising wasn't covering their running costs. The newspapers need a business model that delivers profits. It may be that the Spanish press feel that without Google News it will be easier to have paid subscriptions. It may be that they believe that without Google News, their site "stickiness" will increase, and the value of advertising will increase. Either way, continuing to operate at a loss is no long-term solution.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
They should build better websites. The reason I don't stay on most news websites is not google news, it's paywalls, obtrusive ads, autoplaying videos, etc.
Newspaper advertising traditionally gained its value from the newspaper's demographic. You know the readership, so you know who you're advertising to. Certain newspapers will carry adverts for cheap lager, others expensive champagne. But this notion of a "readership" has been destroyed by Google News -- people now don't chose "their" newspaper, and the advertising becomes untargeted. Newspaper websites are now looking at the same sort of advertising revenues as people's personal blogs. Everything is outsourced to the Google algorithm, and the newspaper itself adds no value to the advertiser.
It is possible that ending the Google News aggregation will mean that sites regain a "readership" and therefore can return to negotiating their own advertising, and that this will result in them returning to profit.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Google's solution to claims of profiting off others' work was to run Google News without any advertising content, but that doesn't deal with the fact that Google News is a contributory factor to the financial woes of the content providers it relies on. If Google wants Google News to survive, it must exist in a viable ecosystem, and right now it doesn't. Even if you don't think this is Google's fault, the problem still exists and must be dealt with.
In the good old days, newspapers really didn't make that much from subscriptions. Most of their revenue was from advertising. Google, by making a story from a given site that probably has ads, is helping.
The bigger problem news outlets have is that they no longer have captive audiences. In transitioning to electronic delivery, they've failed to maintain their value to local merchants in favor of taking advertising dollars from big companies. Personally, I could read an online newspaper that has ads like a newspaper, but no, they have to make them animated, intrusive and obnoxious. That's why online news sucks and loses money.
It's not anti-American to recognize that countries that are not the US have laws that differ from American laws. The US has just as much history of legally protected rackets (software patents, spying on behalf of American corporations, banning Tesla from selling cars, telco monopolies, in fact, I think the US has a far worse record than Germany on this).
So why is it to anti-American to expect companies to obey the laws of the country they operate in? Maybe because American companies are used to buying laws? Guess what: that's what just happened in Spain. That mess is as American as you can get.
Yes, that Spanish law is stupid, but the summary is stupid for trying to connect it to Uber and Airbnb. Uber, by the way, are a bunch of thugs who even many Americans agree should go out of business as soon as possible.
The problem with this solution, that this is a law passed by the Spanish government. So, publishers are required to collect money, even if they don't want to.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Some big errors in the summary:
The decision of Google comes as response to new Spanish legislation that gives publishers the right to claim compensation for republishing any part of their content.
No, if this was the case, it'd just be a rehash of the German situation. No, the problem here is that it gives publishers the obligation to claim compensation. This law is specifically designed to prevent the German situation. So other newspapers can't decide they'd rather have Google's traffic anyway, and thereby undermine this boycott of Google News.
It also fixes another problem that big Spanish newspapers had: on Google News, you could just as easily find small, independent news sites that were critical of the current (conservative) government, as the sites of the major newspapers (which are mostly supportive of the government). Outside Google News, the small press is a lot harder to find. This law removes competition for the big guys as well as criticism about the government. Win-win for big corps and the government. Lose for the people and the small independent press.
Also:
This follows news of services of startup Uber being forbidden in countries like Spain as well as Germany and some city councils worldwide like Delhi, or other services like AirBnb being put under pressure to cope with local laws in other jurisdictions.
This issue has nothing to do with Uber and Airbnb not complying with local laws. There is nothing wrong with foreign companies having to obey local laws in they want to operate there. This, however, is a new law that will hurt the small Spanish press (Google won't be hurt that much, since they don't make money on Google News anyway).
By the way complaints against Uber and Airbnb (which should have been irrelevant to this story but now aren't because of the stupid summary) are not that unreasonable; they're side-stepping consumer-protection regulations that exist for good reasons. In some places they're also side-stepping monopolies or cartels, which is great of course, but some of the laws they're running afoul of are actually good laws.
As a final word, Uber are by now well known to be a bunch of thugs who need to go out of business as soon as possible.