France Applies Tax Pressure To Google For Republishing News Snippets 350
Qedward writes "France may introduce a law to make Google pay to republish news snippets if it doesn't strike a deal with French news publishers before the end of the year, the office of French President François Hollande said. French publishers want to share in the revenue that Google earns from advertising displayed alongside their news snippets in search results. Readers are often satisfied by reading the headline and summary published by Google News, and don't feel the need to click through to the news site, the publishers say. In this way, Google profits and the content creators don't. The publishers want to be able to charge Google to compensate them for ad revenue losses."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Here's a hint (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, indeed. Will these newspapers now put their publications behind darkened glass paper dispensers, so that no one will just look at the headline and decide no to buy it?
"We want free advertising of our product, but don't want you to make any money doing it for us!" Google should consider charging them for advertising they're giving them.
robots.txt (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe newspapers who don't want to get republished by Google should learn about "robots.txt"? Granted, it's more than a decade old, but it still works.
Re:But what about Mutual Benefits (Score:3, Interesting)
I wouldn't know the majority of news sites if it weren't for Google's aggregation. So I wouldn't click their sites at all. This seems like they're wanting compensation for something that already compensates them by listing them and making their site more visible.
Actually the payment should flow both ways. If the French (and Belgian, and German) Publishers want to free-ride google and charge google for the pleasure, then I don't really see why google shouldn't charge them for the privilege. Could get to be quite fun.
Re:Banned from Google? (Score:3, Interesting)
The French newspapers know what they're doing. They don't want to be unlisted from Google, that would be a terrible idea. If you're not listed in the largest search engine, no one can find you and you're in trouble. But if they all threaten to unlist together, then it's Google who is in trouble in France. Google is in the business of linking people to content, and it can't do that without any content, so the newspapers (as long as they act together, and especially if the government backs them) have a foothold to bargain with Google. If Google wants to keep its share of the French market, it can't afford to lose the news agencies - little as it may care about losing just one.
That said though, I don't think Google will have to pay. Sense will prevail in the end.
Monopoly muscles (Score:3, Interesting)
And then, it becomes much more interesting as Europe is constantly probing many companies for such evil monopolistic behaviors. Europe could force google to index these newspapers, and France has much more legislative influence over Europe than Belgium which attempted the same kind of tax, several years ago.