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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.
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 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.
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.