Slashdot Mirror
Spanish Media Group Wants Gov't Help To Keep Google News In Spain
English-language site The Spain Report reports that Google's response to mandated payments for linking to and excerpting from Spanish news media sources — namely, shutting down Google News in Spain — doesn't sit well with Spanish Newspaper Publishers' Association, which
issued a statement [Thursday] night saying that Google News was "not just the closure of another service given its dominant market position," recognising that Google's decision "will undoubtedly have a negative impact on citizens and Spanish businesses. Given the dominant position of Google (which in Spain controls almost all of the searches in the market and is an authentic gateway to the Internet), AEDE requires the intervention of Spanish and community authorities, and competition authorities, to effectively protect the rights of citizens and companies."
Irene Lanzaco, a spokeswoman for AEDE, told The Spain Report by telephone that "we're not asking Google to take a step backwards, we've always been open to negotiations with Google" but, she said: "Google has not taken a neutral stance. Of course they are free to close their business, but one thing is the closure of Google News and quite another the positioning in the general index."
Asked if the newspaper publishers' association had received any complaints from its members since Wednesday's announcement by Google, Mrs. Lanzaco refused to specify, but said: "Spanish publishers talk to AEDE constantly."
The newspapers are the greedy ones. They want to be listed prominently for free and then charge for the content of the list! Hey, if they close the deal, great. Business is business.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Why would Google continue the service to lose money for a function they gain none through...
Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.
That being said, are people too stupid/too lazy to just go to the newspapers' websites and browse the articles?
(probably...)
Well imagine that, they want it all - free traffic from from Google that google has to pay for... Well, it comes full circle now.
"Rights holders" still do not understand the equation.
Google needs to play this card more often.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
One has to love the unforeseen consequences. By the way, this is the first time I saw that the Spanish legislation went further than the German ones - The German court decision merely gave the right to charge, but per the article the Spanish one mandated charging.
I can't help but picture that AEDE is going 'NOT AS PLANNED NOT AS PLANNED!!!'. Though how they could expect Google's actions to be any different in this case than it was in Germany, I don't know.
Spend many millions in lobbying efforts to force Google to pay for doing X, only to have Google go 'Fine, we won't do X', costing them potentially millions more in advertising.
Now, one should remember that consumer protection and business regulation is much stronger over in Europe, but deciding that a business has to continue to run at a loss is pushing it. It's more likely that they'll get a emergency overruling of the 'must pay' system.
Because let's face it: NOBODY is going to want to run a news aggregator where they have to pay to list the news. It's more likely that the news sites would have to pay to be listed.
I don't read AC A human right
These publishers used the wrong attack angle. They should have negotiated some nominal fee say US$100/yr in return for Google linking to their sites as it saw fit.
Their argument would be that the relationship entranches Google's mindshare among users and furthers its hegemony in search. That can't be bad for Google.
Google would have come to the table.
There's a lot of comments stating that this is surprising or unforeseen, but this is an obvious result. What other option made any business sense? It makes no sense to pay to advertise for companies who tried to do a legal shakedown of you. Shutting down Google News Spain was the only rational move to take. There really isn't a middle ground.
Turning on advertising, while it sounds like it might work, would just be a waste of their resources. Why would they put forth that effort? Even if they broke even, this would only benefit the extortionists, and encourage others to try similar legal maneuvers. There really was only one course of action. It takes some serious slef-delusion to imagine any other outcome, really.
I can't think of a situation in which a free service would remain open if the main beneficiaries tried to squeeze cash out of them. The inverse referral fee is not a valid business tactic.
That I no longer have Google with which to access my porn!
I mean, what did they do back in the heady days of JaNET and dialup BBS, yanno, like "Before Google"??
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
It Spain wishes to use its "authoriteh" as a nation to attempt to extort protectionist fees for a service that already serves as a benefit to the very business they are trying to protect - Google is, as a private entity, well within its rights to terminate the availability of Google News in Spain and take additional steps up to and including delisting targeted classes of companies entirely from their general index as a method of showing their dismay.
"It is morally wrong to initiate the aggressive use of force.." Of course, defensive force is fair game...
You didn't ask google or negotiate with google. Your government said they'd use their state agencies to cease google assets or go through international diplomatic channels to cease google assets unless google started paying you money.
Google responded by taking that power away from you by shutting down all excuses you would have to use such powers.
Quid pro quo.
This for that.
Action = Reaction.
What needs to be walked back is the Spanish law or attempt to make google pay. If you want google to do some sort of ad revenue sharing or whatever... then have that discussion. But ultimately, if they don't want to pay you... then at the end of the day you're either going to have to accept that google considers the money they get from ad traffic to be all theirs... period... or that you're going to have make a viable internet business without google's help.
Choose.
I, like many here, am very supportive of what google has done here not so much because it sticks it to spanish newspapers which I have no opinion on. But rather because it should scare arrogant government ministers into accepting that they actually aren't all powerful.
Similar things happened in Hungry when they tried to take bandwidth. We have these aging institutions that are being bypassed by the internet and they don't like it. Rather then adapt they're just trying to legislate the internet into paying them.
Fuck them. Either join the 21st century or subsist on existing revenue streams.
The media business is very hard these days. Nothing unusual about that. Many US media organizations are going bankrupt. But if you look back in time, you'll see that that isn't that unusual. The media business has always been a tough one. Typically it is dominated by deep pockets that dominate the industry with ruthless powerplays.
We'll see where it goes.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
We don't want you to close. We just want you to pay us.
I think Google should not only close Google News in spain, but also delist all Spanish (located in spain) sites. I bet the Spanish government would quickly change their tune.
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Does Slashdot operate within Spain?
That I no longer have Google with which to access my porn!
I mean, what did they do back in the heady days of JaNET and dialup BBS, yanno, like "Before Google"??
A line printer, a ton of green-bar paper, a lot of tape and scissor work, hang it on the wall, and then stand way, way back to find out you've been Rick-Rolled and it's the "woman in hat" picture again?
Never negotiate with terrorists.
I actually think Google should charge all media organisations to be seen on News where laws like this are in effect but offer a free service elsewhere
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
You weren't supposed to stop routing customers to us, you were supposed to give us money!
As the law appears to state that even linking to a news site means paying, I am all for Google not linking to Spain's news organizations in their search business as well. No one can force you to do something that requires a toll.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
What if Google includes click-through rates by users in its search rankings?
People in Spain wont be clicking through links to Spanish news sites via news.google.es so Google will algorithmically have no choice but to deprioritise those sites in comparison to e.g. Mexican ones.
Of course, we're both assuming that Google are even allowed to link to Spanish news sites in search results - when I search google it shows me an excerpt of the matching text; if Google have to pay the news sites to include that then it's illegal for them to include those sites if they haven't paid.
Personally I take the view that it's Google's website, Google's index and Google that succeed or fail by whether the results they show meet the needs of their users. So let them make the call and not politicians.
This whole fiasco is hilarious to me. When I was reading about this a couple months back I thought to myself, "Google will just leave Spain, no sane company would pay other company's to provide a service for them free of charge". Sure enough, they do just that. The best and only business decision open to them. What this AEDE wants with support of this legislation on top on trying to have Google forced to keep it's doors open in Spain is basically the business model for Slavery. I support Google's muscle flex in this case, it (Google) displays a presence of not bowing to extortion. AEDE, biting the hand that feeds you is bad business.
I wonder if this means that posting a link to a Spanish news organization in Slashdot's comments means that Slashdot has to pay or if it means I have to pay. If the former, I could see a revenue generation opportunity:
1) Pay someone (preferably someone in a third world country who will work cheap) to post links to your news website on various comment boards.
2) Threaten these people unless they pay*.
3) Profit!
* Sure, they might remove the link, but this just means you need to get your lawmakers to pass a law making removing links illegal.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.