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Google Considering Pulling News Service From Europe (bloomberg.com)
Google is considering pulling its Google News service from Europe as regulators work toward a controversial copyright law. From a report: The European Union's Copyright Directive will give publishers the right to demand money from Alphabet, Facebook and other web platforms when fragments of their articles show up in news search results, or are shared by users. The law was supposed to be finalized this week but was delayed by disagreement among member states.
Google News might quit the continent in response to the directive, said Jennifer Bernal, Google's public policy manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The internet company has various options, and a decision to pull out would be based on a close reading of the rules and taken reluctantly, she said. "The council needs more time to reflect in order to reach a solid position" on the directive, said a representative of Romania, current head of the European Council, which represents the 28 member nations.
Google News might quit the continent in response to the directive, said Jennifer Bernal, Google's public policy manager for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The internet company has various options, and a decision to pull out would be based on a close reading of the rules and taken reluctantly, she said. "The council needs more time to reflect in order to reach a solid position" on the directive, said a representative of Romania, current head of the European Council, which represents the 28 member nations.
Where will Europeans get their news from? Maybe Slashdot?
I presume the fuss is over the supposed "hyper-link tax" which has to be one the most idiotic ideas I've come across in my adult life. This is not how the web is supposed to work. There is no way that paying one site to provide a link to site makes any sense in any rational being's mind.
If there's going to be *ANY* exchange of cash for hyperlinks, it totally should be the opposite direction. Site A pays Site B to entice Site B to link to Site A's pages. Paid promotion of your content. This sort of makes sense, I can tolerate it at least. But Site A paying Site B for the "privilege" of linking to pages on Site B. STUPID BEYOND BELIEF.
If anything shackles the internet in the EU, this is it right here. Proceed with caution, you're going to basically crack the internet's entire foundation of sharing information.
... the Powers That Be (tm) are intent on returning to single source fount of information.
This whole internet thing threw a spanner in the works for a few years, but looks like it's being reigned in.
Back to business as usual.
Check your premises.
This "link tax" is about the same as saying: I have to pay an author of a book royalties if I suggest to others that they read it, perhaps quoting a passage or paragraph from that book in my effort to get you to read it.
Does this make sense to anyone? Of course it doesn't. The world doesn't work like that.
But in the magical fairy land of the EU, this is precise what they want to do. You pay the author if you even want to suggest others read the author's content. STUPID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There's not enough exclamation points in the universe to properly emphasize this!
The relationship is much more symbiotic than parasitical; Google News pulled out of Spain at the end of 2014 for a similar link tax, and the publishers floundered:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/...
[the] 'substitution effect' is very small in comparison to the 'market expansion effect' that aggregators cause.
they should just shut it down for a few days and see how quickly all those news outlets complain to their MEPs about lost ad revenue.
I can see blocking service from pinhead weasels like the EU. they don't want any accidental usage, shut 'em down. Google News is not free... it's ad-driven. and even use of a US trademark legally in an ad that might be otherwise registered in the EU, like, say, Budweiser, is cause for big-ass unrelated fines. fsck 'em.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
If news companies don't want Google indexing their content, they should just say so in their robots.txt file. There's no reason for Google to completely abandon the EU, and there's no reason for content owners to complain that others are indexing their content when they have a perfectly functionality way of controlling whether or not the content is indexed.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
This. As a European I say: good on Google for pulling out if this dumb law gets passed.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
It's funny because in french, "EU" ~ "É.U." = the acronym for "États-Unis" (United States).
#DeleteFacebook
The last time google pulled news from Germany, the news paper websites lost 70% traffic redirects....
So suck on that looser.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
i.e. Search engine crawlers should not index the site, unless the site owner explicitly allows it in the robots.txt file.
I mean I completely understand why it's set up the way it is. Setting the robots.txt to disallow crawling doesn't actually disallow crawling. It's just that the services which respect the file won't crawl your site if you have it set to disallow them. Inverting it gives the false sense that unless you explicitly allow crawlers, it is somehow impossible for them to index your site.
But that seems to be what the EU legal system wants. So maybe that's the way it should work, despite the false sense of security it may give the more clueless people.