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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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Pretty much the only thing I can see that connects these three are that a US company operating abroad sometimes doesn't find a service that's legal in the US to be legal or practical in $RANDOM_COUNTY_THAT_ISNT_MERICA
As for the story, it's a shame, but that's how the Spanish media wants to operate, the Spanish government agrees with them, and so be it. It's not a big issue, or at least, if it ends up causing hardship, the political process will be followed again and changes will be made again.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I am from Spain. The most interesting thing about this is that this stupid law was rushed throught the parlamentary process by surprise, with an ammendment added at the last minute. On the same period, three of the most important reporters that were critical to the government in the big spanish media were fired.
There is especulation that the two things are linked and this was a deal between the Spanish government and the owners of the big media conglomerates in Spain. The media got this law against Google in exchange for supporting the ailing government party which is 50% down in the polls as compared to the last general election, and panicking.
So the big media owners got what they wanted in exchange of censoring news critical to the government. What they do not realize is that this is going to hit their bottom lines because Google is not going to fold down. The are going to lose lots of money and media, and other newspapers from outside Spain are going to increase their share. At the end they will run to the government asking them to remove this law. Or they may even do it before the law is in place, when they see that Google is going to shut them down. The will deserve the humilliation. And this will tarnish their credibility because of the deal they did with the government. They are fools.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
where individual newspaper publisher can wave their fee and beg Google to reindex their paper, the Spanish version of the law is universal. The only way for the newspaper to get their content re-indexed is for the law to either be tossed out or they repeal it. Oh the pain will last longer here.
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'
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.