Google announced Thursday it will close Google News in Spain and block reports from Spanish publishers from more than 70 Google News international editions due to a new Spanish law requiring aggregators to pay to link content — a decision that will reverberate around the globe.
Google News in Spain will shut down on Dec. 16 — several weeks before a new Spanish intellectual property law takes effect Jan. 1 requiring news publishers to be paid.
That means people in Latin America, where Spanish news organizations have sought to boost their audiences, won't see news from Spain via Google News in Mexico or elsewhere. Also set to disappear are reports in English from Spanish publishers like Madrid's leading El Pais newspaper.
People who use Google's standard search in Spain and anywhere else around the world will still be able to find articles on their own from Spanish publications, because the law applies only to aggregators and not to individuals who do their own searches outside of Google News.
The decision by Google Inc. is the first shutdown since Google News debuted as an experimental project in 2002.
Richard Gingras, head of Google News, said the decision was made "with real sadness" because Google News is "a service that hundreds of millions of users love and trust, including many here in Spain."
Spain's AEDE association, which represents large news publishers, had lobbied for the law nicknamed the "Google Tax." It declined comment Thursday. A spokesman for El Pais said the newspaper did not plan to comment on Google's action and the publishers of three other large Spanish newspaper groups also declined to comment or did not respond to messages.
But Spain's Culture Ministry characterized Google's move as a legitimate business decision. The ministry also said the law doesn't apply to individuals and will protect the intellectual property of publications that spend money to create content without hindering freedom of information.
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Alejandro Tourino, a Madrid-based lawyer who specializes in media issues and has worked for The Associated Press on several legal cases, said Spanish news publishers may "have shot themselves out of the market. Time will tell."
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20141211/eu--google-spain-460415ef18.html
