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."

Comments

More power to Google

[fustakrakich]

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.

They brought it upon themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would Google continue the service to lose money for a function they gain none through...

Re:They brought it upon themselves

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny thing about extortion. If the person you're trying to extort can just walk away without paying the extortion, they always do.

Re:They brought it upon themselves

[turbidostato]

"All we have to do is figure out who is trying to extort whom."

AEDE, no doubt.

Their point is that they forcibly want a levvy for the "privilege" of indexing their headlines because "they are providing profit to the indexers". They obviously "forget" about the more or less 30% of traffic that comes to them straigth from google news.

Google can't just stop indexing AEDE members in order to avoid the tax because the levvy is for everyone in that activity no matter what, so they decided that since they don't want to pay, they'll close their doors in Spain.

And then, all of a sudden, AEDE members "remember" about that 30% of traffic that Google news is providing them and claim kindof "monopoly" on the part of Google so the government somehow should force Google to stay open and pay the levvy nevertheless.

AEDE (news), CEDRO (books), EGEDA (films) and SGAE (music) are just the Spanish versions of your RIAA, just so you know what kind of people are we talking about.

HAHA!

[Anonymous Coward]

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...)

Re:HAHA!

[BarbaraHudson]

Coming from Canada, I'll give you an example of the problem with Google News. PS I'm not french.

1) Clicking the news tab will always default to the US news. Even if Google is forcing the google.ca domain

Strange. I live in Kanuckistan and I don't have that problem. If you allow cookies, or have a gmail account, it will default to whatever you looked at last. Select English Canada from the dropdown, problem solved.

2) There are hundreds of news sources world wide, and sometimes there is overlap between Canadian news and American news, or Canadian news and Australian or UK news. For example looking up news for "Translink" which is the transportation authority in Vancouver,Canada will also bring up news from the UK Translink as well. And sometimes it will mix up the sources within the same context. eg "Translink considering fare increase" will mix in "Translink mayors considering tax increase" The former being the UK issue while the latter being the Canada issue.

Maybe you should have typed "translink vancouver"? And it would help if you were on the English Canada version (see note above).

3) Since Google News can't use language as a partition, you have to be at least somewhat familiar with at least two local news sources. In BC this would be Global News (Owned by Shaw Media) and the Vancouver Sun/The Province (Post Media News) both sources were formerly Canwest media. Also the CBC is an easily identified Canadian source. Items that show up on the CBC are likely of Canadian relevance.

??? "language as a partition"??? Are you seeing stories from the Journal de Montreal, Le Devoir, and TVA?

4) However there is regional overlap. Take the Weather. The recent Pineapple Express that caused torrential rain along BC, Washington, Oregon and California. This is a case where Google News can't figure out local news at all, so the top of the list will be sources like CNN, even in Canada.

Just because someone lives in any particular area doesn't mean that stories about other areas aren't of interest. The bigger the news event, the broader the distribution. The crash of an airliner is news for the world. The crash of your car is not, unless you're Princess Di or someone equally high-visibility. And if you had entered "pineapple express british columbia", the first story is about bc.

Re:HAHA!

[tlambert]

Coming from Canada, I'll give you an example of the problem with Google News. PS I'm not french.

1) Clicking the news tab will always default to the US news. Even if Google is forcing the google.ca domain

Badly designed browsers when doing private browsing don't allow for ephemeral cookies.

The problem is that you are geolocated by IP (and yes, it gets this wrong if you are using a VPN into a node in another country - it thinks you are in the other country; not solving this "problem" is intentional on the part of the IETF), and a attempted cookie is set saying "They are in Canada; redirect and use the google.ca domain to serve up the first page". So google.ca shows up.

This geolocation is not repeated, and the cookie is not reset subsequently, since it's a relatively computationally expensive reverse lookup operation; if the cookie is there, it's referenced, and if the cookie is not there, it's not referenced. Then your subsequent request comes in through that first page, the cookie is examined, is not seen, and therefore you get the default, which is the US response.

The proper thing for your browser to do is to set an ephemeral cookie when doing "private browsing"; that is, it allows the "set" of the cookie, but since it's "private browsing", the cookie is set in memory in the DOM, instead of being saved in permanent cookie storage.

So it's happening that way because your browser implemented has screwed the pooch on what it mean when you are private browsing, and just blocks all cookie sets unconditionally. In other words, your browser sucks.

NB: Chrome gets this wrong in "incognito mode", as well, in the other direction; it implements ephemeral cookies into the session, rather than the DOM. Presumably, this is because they want cookies for login sessions to persist across DOMs which involve Google properties. So it's possible for an "incognito mode" session to leak information to outside parties for cross-site purposes. You'll see this with "limited number of views per month" sites, like the NYT and other news sites, where if you use the same "incognito mode" session - which persists, even if you close the window and open a new "incognito mode" window. If you restart Chrome, then the cookies are flushed. It's not clear whether this is intentional or just bad programming.

Imagine that!

[Frosty Piss]

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.

Re:Imagine that!

[rudy_wayne]

Google needs to play this card more often.

Yes, I'm glad to see someone is finally growing a pair and standing up to this nonsense.

Funny how, just like in Germany, the newspaper publishers scream that Google is killing them, but when Google leaves they complain that Google's leaving is killing them.

Re:Imagine that!

[BarbaraHudson]

Google needs to play this card more often.

Yes, I'm glad to see someone is finally growing a pair and standing up to this nonsense.

Funny how, just like in Germany, the newspaper publishers scream that Google is killing them, but when Google leaves they complain that Google's leaving is killing them.

They're looking to blame anyone except themselves. Google is the target du jour.

Re:Imagine that!

[jbolden]

The publishers didn't attempt to negotiate. They were passing laws / regulations. Negotiations happen between parties on a relatively equal footing.

That being said. This is negotiating. The Spanish publishers said you can't link to our content without paying. Google said no. The publishers passed a law to enforce their position. So now they showed their big stick. Google decides not to link at all which will drive Spanish internet news traffic outside of Spain. That's Google's big stick. This is what negotiating looks like when threats are involved.

Re:Imagine that!

[Zocalo]

Google needs to play this card more often.

No, they need to play it judiciously lest they get accused of abusing their dominant position in the industry to get their own way. In cases like this, I'd say it's justified, but if it looks like this kind of thing is going to become a regular occurance then they'd better make it clear up front that this is their policy and the expected outcome of any such future legislation. Annoying governments by acting like the proverbial 800lb gorilla is a good way to get sanctions that end up costing you a lot more in the long run, albeit probably many, many, years after the original point became a non-issue.

Re:Imagine that!

[jbolden]

Generally when governments legislate in good faith they bring major stakeholders in. The Spanish government shouldn't be regulating search without having Google at the table unless your goal is to move Spain away from Google.

That being said I think walking like this is the right thing to do. Spain (and Europe in general) needs to start working with USA companies whom their people use for services but who do not want to be part of the European regulatory regime. They need to decide, what their policy on how international they want the internet to be. Right now they want the entire continuum:
a) their people to have full easy access to the global internet everything
b) The internet their people has access to run under European law

They need to pick a point on the continuum understanding that (a) and (b) are opposites.

Re:Imagine that!

[Luckyo]

Publishers do not have legislative powers. Democratically elected leaders do.

Democracy means (at least in theory) that demos, the people get to decide what is best for their country. And right now, a lot of people across Europe are not fond of Google's obvious disregard of them as unimportant enough to not even be negotiated with.

In general, most European nations have a tradition that these things are negotiated on. US/UK tradition is in direct conflict with this, and is more of posturing and ultimatums.

Re:Imagine that!

[SydShamino]

By leaving, they are happily giving up their position as leading Spanish news aggregator. That seems to avoid the monopoly issue entirely, as now there's space for other competitors to grow.

Re:Imagine that!

[jbolden]

Democracy means (at least in theory) that demos, the people get to decide what is best for their country. And right now, a lot of people across Europe are not fond of Google's obvious disregard of them as unimportant enough to not even be negotiated with.

The problem is that European democracies aren't representing the people. Google is more popular in Europe than it is the United States. For example for search Google is down to 68% while in Europe it is still over 90%. Android in the USA has about 25% share among the top 50% incomewise. In Europe the numbers are often as high as 80%. Both countries are similar for the bottom 50% economically. So I don't think it is accurate to say the people of Europe object.

Now what is accurate to say is that the government objects. Google is a major dispenser of technology and news and is simply proving unwilling to cave with European governments on a host of issues. I would call what Google is doing negotiating. What you might mean is pleading where a company goes to a government and says, "pretty please can you change the law to X". Google is negotiating not pleading because ultimately Google understands from its experience with China where pleading leads.

Re:Imagine that!

[DrJimbo]

But instead of negotiating or even trying to compromise they [Google] just took their ball and left.

WTF? What was there to negotiate or compromise on? Paying the extortionists any non-zero amount would have been the worst business decision ever made by Google. While there were extreme options available to Google, such as law suits and massive lobbying, Google took a rather mild approach by obeying the silly law while refusing to pay the extortion which meant they simply shut down their services that would have been encumbered by the extortion racket.

Even if the complete lunacy of the extortion racket was not clear to you previously, this idiotic press release should have made it crystal clear. The Spanish news media need Google more than Google needs them. Therefore it was idiotic for the Spanish news media to try to get Google to pay them for providing them with a service they greatly desire.

When you are freely providing someone a service they greatly desire and then they want to charge *you* for providing them with this service, there is very little room for compromise or negotiation. For example, if I owned a country and passed a law that Slashdot has to pay me for every comment I post, their only logical response would be to stop allowing me to post comments. I could bitch and moan about them being big babies about it but until my position has some relationship to reality, there is really nothing to negotiate or compromise on.

Re:Imagine that!

[Notabadguy]

If you were to RTFA linked in the summary, you would find two things:

1. The Spanish Newpaper Lobbyist Group (AEDE) is behind the legislation.
2. Corruption in Spain is rampant, in every aspect of life.

Re:Imagine that!

[cheesybagel]

You're still thinking like this is the 90s and you are MS buying MSNBC and trying to get people to use MSN. Google is not interested in human resource intensive operations like that. It is all about datamining and storing existing content not to create new content.

Re:Imagine that!

[turbidostato]

"Publishers do not have legislative powers. Democratically elected leaders do."

Have you thought a bit about what the "intellectual propiety business" involves, moreso when talking about levvies?

It basically gets down to the collecting agency sitting down waiting for the buckets full of money to arrive.

This means two things:
1) They have quite a lot of money.
2) They don't need to work a hard day for the money to arrive so they have time to do other things instead... like lobbying the government making use of the lot of money they gather (see one).

And then, let's talk about the subset of IP business we are talking here: press. They not only have the money and the inclination to lobby the government, they also control the tool politics are most afraid of: press. Now put together these three things and see that, yes, publishers have indeed factual legislative powers.

Re:Imagine that!

[Dr. Spork]

Yeah, except the Spanish media is not at all in a good negotiating position. It's not like the only Spanish-language press is in Spain. Spaniards who like Google's service can just switch their link to news.google.ar, .mx, or whatever. Or Google can even keep news.google.es but focus on stories about Spain as they appear in the Spanish-speaking press outside of Spain.

If Spaniards come to see domestic newspapers as dispensable, those newspapers are the only party that loses. In fact, I would bet that before long, some of the minor Spanish news outlets will break and announce that they have arranged an fee exemption for Google news. Without domestic competition, these sources will suddenly have top billing and a surge in traffic. And suddenly, everyone else will announce their own fee exemption, and this whole thing will end how it started.

Re:Imagine that!

[Vinegar Joe]

Funny how, just like in Germany, the newspaper publishers scream that Google is killing them, but when Google leaves they complain that Google's leaving is killing them.

Germany is looking for a final solution to the Google problem.

Re:Imagine that!

[jbolden]

It is illegal in Spain to not collect the fee. That's how the Spanish law differs from the German law. On the other hand the possibility of Spanish internet news moving abroad is very high. The first wave of bankruptcy would be the secondary Spanish news sites which depend on Google to drive traffic. So they are going to be highly motivated to sell their content to a Mexican newspaper with a Spanish news section...

Re:Imagine that!

[turbidostato]

"Most European cultures including Spain do not have such a culture. Instead, they would likely prefer to negotiate with google on the issue."

You just don't understand the issue here.

This legislation is so utterly stupid (I'm Spanish), so utterly against everybody but AEDE members (you see, they don't even represent the press but only the six biggest press companies), that everybody except AEDE and their government mates where *prying* for Google to stand its current position as the only hope for the law to be dismissed.

Re:Imagine that!

[DrJimbo]

But instead of negotiating or even trying to compromise they [Google] just took their ball and left.

Here is a better analogy:

A: If you don't pay us a bunch of money we are going to shoot ourselves in the foot!

B: That's a ridiculous business proposition. We aren't going to pay you anything. Shoot yourselves if you feel you must but we don't recommend it.

A: Wah! You are such a big baby! Why won't you at least negotiate or compromise?

Re:Imagine that!

[jbolden]

Dude it isn't moronic. The market segmentation has a lot to do with the profits on handset sales, the profits on cellular contracts, the profits from software, the profits on advertising. The top 11% of customers are worth more than the remaining 89% by a lot. Heck the top 3% may be worth more than the bottom 97%.

You can desegment the "transportation facilitation devices" and list shoes, bicycles, cars and airplanes in one big pile. But that doesn't change the fact a single airplane sale is worth many many sales of shoes.

Re:Imagine that!

[jbolden]

Absolutely. I was talking the cell phone market in terms of profit share. Rich people don't spend that much more on food than poor people. I'm not sure it is worth segmenting. Apparel spending is falling across all income brackets, but assuming that's transition then we can track it. Women spend most of the money on clothing and the rule of thumb for them was 5%. That holds up to about $120k and then mostly levels out. Men however are nowhere near as lucrative when it comes to clothes. So even here you want to segment a bit by sex. Some things like rent and tobacco correlate negatively with income.

Electronics though (Best Buy) oh heck yeah income matters. Spending on electronic devices doubles for every 50% increase in income. That doesn't level out until you get over $200k / year in income.

Re:Imagine that!

[whoever57]

Google is the target du jour.

Because that is where the money is

A step too far?

[Firethorn]

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.

Re:A step too far?

[MMC Monster]

It's more likely that the news sites would have to pay to be listed.

That is an option. Wouldn't it be lovely if Google offered to bring back the news aggregator only if subsidized by the papers?

Re:A step too far?

[BarbaraHudson]

It's more likely that the news sites would have to pay to be listed.

That is an option. Wouldn't it be lovely if Google offered to bring back the news aggregator only if subsidized by the papers?

Better yet, getting permission to put more than just snippets online. Host the whole damn paper, rather than the individual publishers having to have their own platforms. The publishers still get ad revenue, and an improved online presence, without as much overhead in their online department.

Of course their print edition will tank, but it already is, so what DO they have to lose?

Re:A step too far?

[Firethorn]

The Spanish lawmakers wanted to prevent that.

By what realistic measure did AEDE expect Google to pay, when it outright stated that it'd shut down in Germany before paying? Did they expect Spain to be different?

Like has been said, news aggregation is a loss leader for google - they don't even get advertising money on those pages.

Re:A step too far?

[qzzpjs]

That is an option. Wouldn't it be lovely if Google offered to bring back the news aggregator only if subsidized by the papers?

I always thought this might be a good solution for Google. The news clips they publish on the search page are technically adverts for the full article. Google should charge the news sites for that advertising which would include the cost that Google pays to the news site for copyright, plus a nice 5-10% or so to pay for the extra administrators Google would need to employ to manage it. A useless waste of time and money transfer, but that's the way their law demands it now.

Re:Why is anyone surprised?

[BarbaraHudson]

Google is very much aware of the "camel's nose" problem.

Actions have consequences.

[Lokinator]

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.

Re:They need to take it a step further...

[jbolden]

Microsoft has more serious problems related to Azure and USA warrants. And for that matter more serious monopoly problems as they integrate their web services with Windows. Their interests are served by Google winning this fight not by them losing. The problem the EU regulators have is they don't like the internet being under the control of non-European companies. That's a problem equally with Microsoft, Google, Apple, Facebook, Verizon, LinkedIn, AT&T, CISCO... They aren't going to stab each other in the back on this.

Corporations pick fights with governments all the time. Ultimately governments can push companies out of their county. But they can't tell companies to sell at terms they would rather not be involved with.