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Google News May Shut in Some Countries Over EU Plans To Charge Tax For Links (theguardian.com)
Google's top news executive has refused to rule out shutting down Google News in EU countries, as the search engine faces a battle with Brussels over plans to charge a "link tax" for using news stories. The Guardian reports: Richard Gingras, the search engine's vice-president of news, said while "it's not desirable to shut down services" the company was deeply concerned about the current proposals, which are designed to compensate struggling news publishers if snippets of their articles appear in search results. He told the Guardian that the future of Google News could depend on whether the EU was willing to alter the phrasing of the legislation. "We can't make a decision until we see the final language," he said. He pointed out the last time a government attempted to charge Google for links, in 2014 in Spain, the company responded by shutting down Google News in the country. Spain passed a law requiring aggregation sites to pay for news links, in a bid to prop up struggling print news outlets. Google responded by closing the service for Spanish consumers, which he said prompted a fall in traffic to Spanish news websites. "We would not like to see that happen in Europe," said Gingras. "Right now what we want to do is work with stakeholders."
Us Europeans will not miss it one bit, the European printing business that was behind this legislation however will miss it quite a bit since Google News is a major source of users that end up on the various news papers sites.
You would think the EU would look at Spain and the consequences their news industry suffered. But they are like politicians everywhere: corrupt, stupid, and begging to be strung up by a short rope in a tall tree.
Google News can go fuck itself with a rusty cheese grater for all I care.
But still, the idea to tax these things is a delicate issue. Having read the currently approved proposal of Article 11 I know that the wording is pretty vague. Certainly not enough to be sure for what they really want. In its current form it would allow "mere hyperlinks accompanied by individual words". Mere hyperlinks, sure. Those usually also contain the head line. But what the hell is "individual words" supposed to mean here? How much leeway can you have here as a for profit company? Would you be able to write a small synopsis of the article in your own individual words?