Spanish Media Group Wants Gov't Help To Keep Google News In Spain 191
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."
More power to Google (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would Google continue the service to lose money for a function they gain none through...
Re:They brought it upon themselves (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
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HAHA! (Score:5, Insightful)
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...)
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Yeah, I've actually tried that. If Google ceased to exist I'd have to go back to Yahoo.
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Wait what? Yahoo uses Bing now, didnt ya know?
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Last I checked, Yahoo! is using Bing for its search results.
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Well some people are stupid enough to think using news aggregators is stupid/lazy so anything is possible... Google's entire business model is collecting information together so you don't have to search through hundreds of seperate sources.
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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 t
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Not to mention that the insights on foreign news sources on local events can be quite... interesting. Everyone has their own spin, and usually the real story is in the intersection of as many spins as possible.
What tends to aggravate me more about Google News is how reporting on major international events gets diluted with "$event Victim Ha
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I truly didn't now Google has a news site.
Re:HAHA! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Badly designed browsers when doing private browsing
It is called PRIVATE BROWSING - let's repeat this once again PRIVATE BROWSING.
Use no-skript with ghostery and clear your cache if you want to be selective.
Then don't expect things which depend on cookies to work, or bitch about them when they don't. You expect them to do a geolocation by IP address each time you make a request? How is your IP address any less identification than a non-cross-site cookie? And it's not all that accurate (e.g. if you use onion routing, it's random, and if you use a VPN, it's constant for the VPN location), so you're screwed if you browse that way.
Imagine that! (Score:5, Insightful)
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! (Score:5, Interesting)
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! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Because that is where the money is [wikipedia.org]
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Closing the service was a fairly extreme option. Google don't make any money directly because they don't have ads on the site... So turn on the ads for Spanish users. They make money by driving users to their other services too.
But instead of negotiating or even trying to compromise they just took their ball and left.
Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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The point of that sentence was about how popular Android is in Europe and that the raw numbers for USA vs. Europe didn't tell the whole story because it internixed high with low end. The exact opposite of how you read it. Now perhaps you might want to check your paranoia levels a bit.
Re:Imagine that! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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
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I put this together from several sources. But some good general articles
http://www.clevelandfed.org/re... [clevelandfed.org]
http://www.theatlantic.com/bus... [theatlantic.com]
http://www.bls.gov/cex/2010/st... [bls.gov]
http://visualeconomics.creditl... [creditloan.com]
You can Google and find a ton on this.
Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Corruption is rampant nearly everywhere. Plus last time I heard Spain was a democratic regime with a parliamentary monarchy.
In the USA the MPAA and RIAA pass stupid laws all the time why do you think in Spain things would be different?
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Corruption is rampant nearly everywhere. Plus last time I heard Spain was a democratic regime with a parliamentary monarchy.
In the USA the MPAA and RIAA pass stupid laws all the time why do you think in Spain things would be different?
He doesn't, he was telling that to the naive person he was responding who thinks it should be different.
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"2. Corruption in Spain is rampant, in every aspect of life."
No, not in every aspect of life but, unluckily it's rampant on politicians.
Re:Imagine that! (Score:4, Insightful)
"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.
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Publishers do not have legislative powers. Democratically elected leaders owned by publisher lobbying organizations do.
Fixed that for you. You're welcome.
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The Publishers have elected leaders in their pockets. They pulled out their pet politicians and put them to work earning their keep by passing their master's legislation. I find it quaint that you seem to think politicians work for the people who elect them. What a novel idea.
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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.
Bullshit. European tradition is to have a monarch dictate policy. US tradition is to argue everything out because we got rid of our King, so we had to vote on policy.
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Except that Google and Its employees are citizens with rights too. Everyone should be equal under the law. The law in Spain is now, you have to pay to link to certain types of content. Fine, Google is complying with the law, they tried to convince the people not to support it and failed, so now they are being a good citizen and obeying.
Its not Google's fault you or the news papers miss'em now that they are gone. If Google is now to be forced to operate a news aggregator, than so should every other organ
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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
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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...
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Yes. And likely grow. But more importantly the old media that decides they want to transform may have to move their internet operations including financially out of Spain.
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Google don't make any money directly because they don't have ads on the site...
Any service that brings traffic to Google, will - perhaps in other ways - bring money to Google. Google does not provide "free services", and in this case, the "rights holders" in Spain not only want free, they want Google to pay so that they, the "rights holders" in Spain can not only make money on Google traffic, but make Google pay for the "right" to them.
Of course it is complete bullshit, as the Spaniards had now concluded...
Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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?
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It surprises me that Google doesn't actually have their own online 'newspaper'. They could employ an editor to create a mashup of the best stories online, with a profit-sharing arrangement on ads.
I'd prefer a dedicated web page than, say, facebook injecting clickbait through their universally hated 'Top Stories'.
my two local newspapers have introduced paywalls, with a minimal number of free articles a month. One is fairly decent, the other is Rupert's trashy tabloid, complete with celebrity gossip and mirac
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Google can't do this because it would get absolutely murdered by anti-monopoly regulators for even trying. Abuse of monopolistic power would be extremely obvious in scenario you describe.
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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.
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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! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Yes. Let's see Yahoo or Bing step up and be major news aggregators in Spain. Or do you think they'll get out as well since no one wants to pay to provide a free service?
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Doubtful. Plus if they do Google can just block all news from the EU. Heck they left China and they have a lot more people there than the EU does.
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You can't be a monopoly when you don't even offer a product in the country anymore! It isn't extorting Spain by no longer offering Google news there, anymore than it is extorting any other country it doesn't offer a dedicated service in. Existing, and alternative, operator
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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
Re:Imagine that! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Who is they? The Spanish Government didn't invite Google to the table to negotiate. That's the point.
And do what? Let's say Europe implements that then what? What European phone operating system do they put on devices the next month that doesn't involve Go
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Maybe Telefonica will ressurect Lycos again. Sorry I mean Terra.es.
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That's easy, heck Lycos still exists. The question is how do they get their population to use it?
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That's easy, heck Lycos still exists. The question is how do they get their population to use it?
Pass a law in Spain that people must use it instead of other search engines?
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That's a tough law to enforce and likely to provoke a heck of a lot of backlash.
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That's a tough law to enforce and likely to provoke a heck of a lot of backlash.
You mean like the Spanish people pulling out of the country?
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No like them actually caring and voting for the minority party in the next election.
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No, they don't.
They mostly hate the wage suppression that one half of free trade brings them (the half where other people get to sell stuff to America)
They've really like the other half of free trade (the half where Americans get to sell stuff to other people).
Going back to the pre-free-trade era mostly means losing international business on a massive scale. Which will, in the not-so-
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You are confusing the American people with American business. American business benefits from goods sold abroad but doesn't like the price suppression domestically from foreign competition.
The American people's welfare has become only loosely correlated with American business. Sales abroad which are mainly services do very little for them because the labor is often offshored.
As far as Smoot-Hawley major disruption handled badly is a bad thing. Though frankly other policies were far more destructive than
Re:Imagine that! (Score:4, Informative)
"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.
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This is the standard Anglo approach to the problem. Present a false black and white argument instead of the actual argument, and then present an ultimatum.
Most European cultures including Spain do not have such a culture. Instead, they would likely prefer to negotiate with google on the issue. Google instead chooses to openly extort the country by offering them only two choices which you suggest.
I presume your middle option would be:
S: Pay us a lot for our content showing up in your search results and news!
G: No.
S: We have passed a law that makes you pay us, so pay us!
G: Buh Bye!
S: Savages! They should negotiate on the amount they will pay us! Have they never heard of under the table kickbacks?!?
Isn't that really how you are saying things should have gone?
Or were you thinking that Google should have charged your newspapers for listing them, an amount equal to the amount the newspapers were chargi
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I suspect they get to pull this once, maybe twice, after which EU will offer them a choice. Work with EU regulators and withing EU law or leave world's single biggest market.
I thought Google was supposed to be the monopolist? With talk like that, I guess not.
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There was no negotiation. The Spanish publishers had a law passed to force Google to pay. That's not negotiation that is regulation. Google had two choices under that situation, either pay up or leave. They chose to leave. Now the publishers are pissed because they didn't want that to happen. They wanted Google to pay them and now they realize that they hurt themselves when they had the law passed. Cry me a river.
A step too far? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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?
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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?
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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.
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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.
Keep in mind that wasn't an accidental difference. In Germany, the publishers that opted out of the scheme (and kept their presence in Google News) benefited from absence of those who didn't opt out, which created a motive for all publishers to opt out in a sort of tragedy of the commons situation. The Spanish lawmakers wanted to prevent that.
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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.
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Basically, yes, they thought that Spain would be different.
I think their assumption was that the Germans were a bunch of savages squatting in the ruins of a civilization that could safely be ignored, but that SPAIN! was still the center of civilized culture in the world, and therefore the rules were different....
It's the sort of parochialism y
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"Keep in mind that wasn't an accidental difference. In Germany, the publishers that opted out of the scheme (and kept their presence in Google News) benefited from absence of those who didn't opt out, which created a motive for all publishers to opt out in a sort of tragedy of the commons situation. The Spanish lawmakers wanted to prevent that."
The legislation is an attempt to create a law mandated news cartel:
"In economics, a cartel is an agreement between competing firms to control prices or exclude entry
They used the wrong attack angle (Score:2)
These publishers used the wrong attack angle. They should have negotiated some nominal fee say US$100/yr in return for Google linking to their sites as it saw fit.
Their argument would be that the relationship entranches Google's mindshare among users and furthers its hegemony in search. That can't be bad for Google.
Google would have come to the table.
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They should have negotiated some nominal fee
Why? They tried to squeeze money out of Google and failed; charging a nominal fee serves no purpose.
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"Why? They tried to squeeze money out of Google and failed; charging a nominal fee serves no purpose."
That they tried to squeeze money from Google is the stated true in press they even called the law "The Google Levvy". What they don't tell is that this isn't their only purpose. The real purpose of the law is to silent all voices not within AEDE. In Spain is not the press that it is the fourth power, AEDE is, and they want to stay that way.
Oh, woe is me! (Score:2)
That I no longer have Google with which to access my porn!
I mean, what did they do back in the heady days of JaNET and dialup BBS, yanno, like "Before Google"??
What the old farts did... (Score:2)
That I no longer have Google with which to access my porn!
I mean, what did they do back in the heady days of JaNET and dialup BBS, yanno, like "Before Google"??
A line printer, a ton of green-bar paper, a lot of tape and scissor work, hang it on the wall, and then stand way, way back to find out you've been Rick-Rolled and it's the "woman in hat" picture again?
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motherfucker... scammed again.
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Actions have consequences. (Score:2)
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While I don't know where you are located, the word "right's" in a business sense, might not be qualified to use in the EU. They have different rules that they play by. Googles stance, of "it's my ball and I'm leaving the game" might be a legit Right in the USA, but in the EU it might not be.
This action might be a painful lesson for both the EU and Google. Google's Spanish subsidiary might be forced into action that is unwelcome ( I believe it happened in google china ), the EU might have to intervene and sa
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In the end, it's not a right but a simple fact. It *is* Google's ball and they can take it and go home if they want to. The EU can enact levies and bans to punish Google but in the end they can't make Google do business if they don't want to.
Price of leveraging fiat government powers (Score:2, Insightful)
You didn't ask google or negotiate with google. Your government said they'd use their state agencies to cease google assets or go through international diplomatic channels to cease google assets unless google started paying you money.
Google responded by taking that power away from you by shutting down all excuses you would have to use such powers.
Quid pro quo.
This for that.
Action = Reaction.
What needs to be walked back is the Spanish law or attempt to make google pay. If you want google to do some sort of a
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Or, maybe google offer create a fee structure for listing something in google news that covers the IP cost plus a reasonable administrative fee.
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Why?
How about this...
Google agrees to not list anything a site has on google news unless they sign a EULA or whatever that says google isn't going to pay them for it.
Then individual news outlets can individually choose if they want to be listed or want to be ignored.
There you go. Problem solved.
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Except that the spanish law forbids this from taking place to prevent a repeat of Germany....where this did take place.
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What are you referring to?
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Then having been denied an ability to negotiate the contract, google is doing the right thing by shutting down operations in that market.
When they're ready to be reasonable they can enjoy being linked again.
No, no, no... (Score:2)
We don't want you to close. We just want you to pay us.
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They need to take it a step further... (Score:2)
I think Google should not only close Google News in spain, but also delist all Spanish (located in spain) sites. I bet the Spanish government would quickly change their tune.
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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 oth
Excellent (Score:2)
Noooooo! (Score:2)
You weren't supposed to stop routing customers to us, you were supposed to give us money!
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