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Spanish newspapers push for Google News Tax, GNews exits Spain, media panic ensues

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F

Funky Papa

FUNK-Y-PPA-4
This is being widely (and extremely poorly) reported all over the world, so I thought I could make a thread about the situation over here before somebody takes Forbe's or CNN's articles as factual and comes with another silly "mean euros are trying to tax another american company".

I'm quoting Associated Press' piece just fore purely informative purposes, since it's quite aseptic.

Google on Tuesday followed through with a pledge to shut down Google News in Spain in reaction to a Spanish law requiring news publishers to receive payment for content even if they are willing to give it away.

The company's Spanish Google News page, normally full of aggregated news content, vanished and was replaced by a message saying Google was "incredibly sad" to announce the closure plus a lockout of Spanish publishers from its more than 70 other Google News sites around the world.

Spain's law takes effect Jan. 1 and Google said it wasn't worth it to consider paying the publishers for linking their content because its popular news aggregator makes no money.

The law, nicknamed the "Google Tax," was pushed through by Spain's AEDE association representing large news organizations.
Click to expand...

Effectively, this means no more Google News in Spain. This the first time Google shuts down its News service in a democratic country. And publishers are freaking the fuck out. But there's a lot more to it. Allow me to explain:

With print sales at their lowest levels and their reputation in tatters, Spanish newspapers, grouped under the AEDE banner, lobbied hard in order to tax Google and get a hefty sum. In exchange, they offered their compliance, promising the government not to keep disturbing the powers that be with muckraking coverage about their numerous scandals.

Their reasoning behind the farce was fairly transparent: Google profits from linking to our articles, so we need to receive a compensation as content creators. Furthermore, while we argue that Google is profiting from our work, we don't want to be removed from Google News; instead, we want Google to keep linking to our articles and ensure that this tax is universal and mandatory, with AEDE aligned members as sole receivers of said money. This means that even if Google News removes all AEDE content and decides to exclusively link to non-aligned news sources (which are quickly eroding AEDE's readership), we'll still reap the benefits.

Google saw the law, noticed that nobody was willing to compromise (it's less of a tax and more of dailight robbery), shut down Google News and told everybody to fuck off. Now every single outlet is having a panic attack. Alas, not only the biggest newspapers will take the hit, but also smaller, unaligned pubs that enjoyed Google News' reach and were quickly becoming bad news for the same traditional newspapers that pushed for this "tax".

Enrique Dans (whom I generally despise) explains it better:

Google has announced that it is closing its Google News service in Spain, prompting extremely negative coverage around the world from media as diverse as TechCrunch, The Guardian or SearchEngineLand that raises questions about Spain’s press freedom.

Today’s sad news is very much a chronicle of a death foretold: on September 17, along with several other people, I met with Richard Gingras, the Senior Director of News and Social Products at Google, who told us that faced with a situation where it would have to pay for providing links to news stories, the company would have little option but to close the service in that country.

...

The result of this stupid law will be to harm Spain’s image internationally, as well as hurting the very organizations it supposedly aims to protect. Spain’s image has already suffered as a result of being at the center of the terribly wrong “right to be forgotten,” now we have this.

So how did we get here?

  1. The AEDE called on the government to create a tax on all news links as a way to mitigate the losses its members are suffering as a result of its failure to adapt to the internet.
  2. A government obsessed with negative media coverage starts negotiations with the AEDE, whose members already benefit from generous institutional advertising, about making Google pay, on condition they tone down their criticism.
  3. The AEDE accepts, and soon after, the country’s three main newspapers, La Vanguardia, El Mundo and El País, all replace their editors with more docile journalists. In any other developed country, this shameful episode of corruption and censorship would be enough to bring down the government.
  4. The AEDE and the government set to work, taking their inspiration from legislation passed in German, but with the aim of making sure Google pays this time. In Germany, Google simply converted Google News into a voluntary service, whereby newspapers would have to explicitly renounce payment. This would be done by paying payment for providing links “mandatory and inviolable.”
  5. Despite huge opposition from all non-AEDE media and warnings from experts and the rest of the internet community, a draft on intellectual property right is presented to Congress, although the version sent to Brussels doesn’t include such a polemic article (link in Spanish).
  6. The new measures are fast tracked through Congress with little debate, and are set to come into law in early 2015, although no details have been announced about how payment will work, who will pay, or on what basis, etc.

And now Google has stuck to its guns, announcing the closure of Google News in Spain. In theory, the company could have paid, why would it for something that makes it no money? Google News carries no advertising. And that is leaving out the sacrosanct principle of just not paying for providing links. Google coughing up “because it can” would have left all those other media that can’t afford to pay, and that have said they won’t in any case, to fight the good fight alone.

So, congratulations to the Spanish government. Following the instructions of the AEDE, one of the most archaic organizations in the world, it has once again highlighted the corruption that has come to characterize this country, whereby just about anybody with the money can dictate their terms to the government, and where newspapers will sell their editorial line in return for government cash, and where the government has no idea about what the internet really is, and doesn’t care anyway.
Click to expand...

I'm actually shocked by how superficial are most of the reports I've found over the largest international outlets. I can only assume that they don't want to delve too much into the noxious relationship between newspapers and governments, lest not awake some actual conscience among their own journalists.

PS: Tax me if old.
 
P

Peru

Member
Sounds like stupidity on a level I didn't think possible until 2014 came along with hundreds of examples to prove me wrong.
 
K

kami_sama

Member
Learnt about it the other day on an English-speaking page. I'm dumbfounded there hasn't been any coverage on the Spanish media. I've always read El Pais, any other media outlet you can recommend?
 
A

Ahasverus

Member
Money is the root of all evil indeed, and it's very sad to see the democratic excercise being tampered by mindless ambitions with the goverment acting as a puppet. Stay strong Spain.
 
J

jman2050

Member
...Were they somehow under the impression that Google would just sit there and pay their silly tax for no reason at all?

Actually let's go further than that, were they so confident that Google would just sit there and pay their silly tax for no reason that both sides used the inevitable profits(lol) from this endeavor as political leverage?
 
C

collige

Banned
This was such an unbelievably stupid idea I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around it. Did they really think Google would go along with this bullshit?
 
I

Irminsul

Member
We have almost the same thing in Germany, called "Leistungsschutzrecht" (lit. something about "Service protection law"). Heavily lobbied by news publishers, it was put into law despite numerous critics calling it a "lex google" and that it was obvious it'd never work. It somehow managed to argue news publishers are something very special, much more special than everything covered by traditional copyright laws (and not really supporting the actual authors of copyrighted material).

Well, surprise, surprise, the first thing that happened was that nothing happened. Google threatened to close Google News in Germany, but as the publishers didn't enforce their demands, they lived in an uneasy stalemate.

Until a few weeks ago, when publishers said they'd want to see money from Google. Google just answered they'd delist every publication that would do so, and one by one each publisher caved in. Except Springer, house of such journalistic delights as "Bild", the biggest tabloid paper in Germany. I think Google actually were true to their word and delisted Springer media, which meant a drastic decrease in traffic for them. Then, even Springer caved in, but not without accusing Google of being Very Mean and a general nuisance, even though they're responsible Springer even have that amount of traffic.

All news publishers showed in this was their complete lack of common sense and detachment from reality. Oh, and that publishers can very much influence what their papers are writing, because articles on Google are the most one-sided thing there is in German news media.

I'm certainly no friend of Google, but the matter of the fact is that the only thing Google is doing with News is generating traffic for news publishers, so if anything, it should be them paying for the service.
 
S

Skyzard

Banned
Good on Google, unfortunate outcome for the smaller news sites.

With print sales at their lowest levels and their reputation in tatters, Spanish newspapers, grouped under the AEDE banner, lobbied hard in order to tax Google and get a hefty sum. In exchange, they offered their compliance, promising the government not to keep disturbing the powers that be with muckraking coverage about their numerous scandals.
Click to expand...

Oh shit:
The AEDE accepts, and soon after, the country’s three main newspapers, La Vanguardia, El Mundo and El País, all replace their editors with more docile journalists. In any other developed country, this shameful episode of corruption and censorship would be enough to bring down the government.
Click to expand...
 
Z

Zukuu

Banned
So they actually LINK to your side and you get clicks for it... WHY THE FUCK COMPLAIN?!
I don't get it, seriously, someone explain that to me. That's like wanting to get money from sites you have ads on.
 
A

Altazor

Member
Stupid, archaic and greedy institutions refusing to adapt to the current times and being absolutely terrified of losing the power they once had + corrupt governments = something both absolutely ridiculous and incredibly dangerous for everybody else.
 
S

Sho_Nuff82

Member
razgriz417 said:
Didn't the AEDE yesterday try to petition the Spanish Government to stop Google from shutting down Google News Spain? http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/spanish-publishers-move-to-halt-google-news-closure/

lol fucking greedy idiots
Click to expand...

I'vemadeahugemistake.gif

Did they really think there was a way to force Google to do 'business' with them? You don't extort one of the largest companies in the world.

The government should be ashamed for railroading a bullying legislation just to save their own asses.

Zukuu said:
So they actually LINK to your side and you get clicks for it... WHY THE FUCK COMPLAIN?!
I don't get it, seriously, someone explain that to me. That's like wanting to get money from sites you have ads on.
Click to expand...

People who have their government's ear (read: pockets) will do anything and everything they believe they can get away with. There are no legal consequences, after all.
 
N

Number45

Member
Irminsul said:
We have almost the same thing in Germany, called "Leistungsschutzrecht" (lit. something about "Service protection law"). Heavily lobbied by news publishers, it was put into law despite numerous critics calling it a "lex google" and that it was obvious it'd never work. It somehow managed to argue news publishers are something very special, much more special than everything covered by traditional copyright laws (and not really supporting the actual authors of copyrighted material).

Well, surprise, surprise, the first thing that happened was that nothing happened. Google threatened to close Google News in Germany, but as the publishers didn't enforce their demands, they lived in an uneasy stalemate.

Until a few weeks ago, when publishers said they'd want to see money from Google. Google just answered they'd delist every publication that would do so, and one by one each publisher caved in. Except Springer, house of such journalistic delights as "Bild", the biggest tabloid paper in Germany. I think Google actually were true to their word and delisted Springer media, which meant a drastic decrease in traffic for them. Then, even Springer caved in, but not without accusing Google of being Very Mean and a general nuisance, even though they're responsible Springer even have that amount of traffic.

All news publishers showed in this was their complete lack of common sense and detachment from reality. Oh, and that publishers can very much influence what their papers are writing, because articles on Google are the most one-sided thing there is in German news media.

I'm certainly no friend of Google, but the matter of the fact is that the only thing Google is doing with News is generating traffic for news publishers, so if anything, it should be them paying for the service.
Click to expand...
This seems to be covered in the quoted article in the OP. In Germany the publishers can opt-in, at which time they waive the right to receive payment - in Spain it will be mandatory.
 
F

f0lken

Member
Alx said:
It doesn't seem healthy that the press depends that much on Google, though...
Click to expand...

Is what the market wants though, they have been countless alternatives from good to bad and they are just bleeps on the radar.

And Spain's institutions are greedy as fuck, they are the ones that sends agents to parties to stop them from playing music unless the pay a tax for public use of said music. Even as a mexican and our famous corruption I can't help but be amused at Spain's laughable initiatives like this.
 
C

coleco

Member
One more example of the infinite stupidity of spanish politicians and their friends. Also, let's not forget this party won by majority so they can do as they wish, as they've been doing for the last 3 years. People get the government they deserve.
 
P

Peru

Member
The part about publishers going insane in desperation over last ditch efforts to curb the profit loss for journalistic content is not surprising, everyone around the world is scrambling to find new ways to make this work as a business. The complete journalistic and free speech failure of bowing to government requests that ruin all credibility from such large and established newspapers is shocking. Though it's obvious the original editors would not accept it since they were replaced.
 
S

Sho_Nuff82

Member
coleco said:
One more example of the infinite stupidity of spanish politicians and their friends. Also, let's not forget this party won by majority so they can do as they wish, as they've been doing for the last 3 years. People get the government they deserve.
Click to expand...

I wonder how the average Spanish citizen feels about this news.
 
F

Frustrated_me

Member
Acidote said:
The best thing about this is that newspapers like "El Mundo" have started paying adwords for "noticias" (news). So now they're actually paying for getting less visits than what they wanted to force Google to pay them for.

https://twitter.com/jrsanfeliu/status/544707149843398657 (Spanish, but self explanatory)
Click to expand...

Ahahaha WOW. So Google is now making money off them? It's delicious really.

JzKGOjM.png
 
C

coleco

Member
Sho_Nuff82 said:
I wonder how the average Spanish citizen feels about this news.
Click to expand...

The average citizen doesn't know much about it. The average internet user / younger voter does and is shitting on the government.

But the problem is they'll still get 25% or more votes easily on the next election, and there's a real chance they'll be able to keep/share power with some alliances here and there. And if they do, people will deserve it.
 
C

ClosingADoor

Member
Battersea Power Station said:
I'm surprised that there's such "panic" over Google News shutting down. I didn't think it was very popular when compared with Yahoo or other link aggregators.
Click to expand...
It's not so much about Google News itself as the website. It's about the news results you get between search results. Those get websites in high positions for keywords they normally wouldn't get. Now Spanish websites are totally blocked from getting those visitors.
 
Battersea Power Station

Battersea Power Station

Member
ClosingADoor said:
It's not so much about Google News itself as the website. It's about the news results you get between search results. Those get websites in high positions for keywords they normally wouldn't get. Now Spanish websites are totally blocked from getting those visitors.
Click to expand...
So this actually changes the search algorithm? That's odd. How does it distinguish what's news? Like if I search for a 5 year old plane crash story, will it omit results that old from The Spanish Times or whatever? Or is it only about this week's events? I'd love to see some examples.
 
Vlodril

Vlodril

Member
coleco said:
The average citizen doesn't know much about it. The average internet user / younger voter does and is shitting on the government.

But the problem is they'll still get 25% or more votes easily on the next election, and there's a real chance they'll be able to keep/share power with some alliances here and there. And if they do, people will deserve it.
Click to expand...

Really? i lived briefly in spain the past two years and everyone was very down on rajoy
 
W

whatsinaname

Member
Battersea Power Station said:
So this actually changes the search algorithm? That's odd. How does it distinguish what's news? Like if I search for a 5 year old plane crash story, will it omit results that old from The Spanish Times or whatever? Or is it only about this week's events? I'd love to see some examples.
Click to expand...

When you search for a current event, there is a "In the News" section amongst the search results. It collects links/articles based on time and url to mark it as "News". I am assuming this won't show up in Spain any more. Everything else will work as normal.
 
F

Funky Papa

FUNK-Y-PPA-4
Battersea Power Station said:
So this actually changes the search algorithm? That's odd. How does it distinguish what's news? Like if I search for a 5 year old plane crash story, will it omit results that old from The Spanish Times or whatever? Or is it only about this week's events? I'd love to see some examples.
Click to expand...

Check this image

ED3Aph7.png
Click to expand...

I looked for "housing prices" and the latest news (prior Google News' closure) showed up mixed with the search's results. This was a huge boon for newspapers. Now they are totally fucked.

Vlodril said:
Really? i lived briefly in spain the past two years and everyone was very down on rajoy
Click to expand...
I have to wonder where you lived. He's been one of the least liked politicians for a good while. Nearly every non-party member hates his guts these days.
 
F

Fare Godmace

Member
Is there any proof that the government accepted to go with the tax in exchange of toned down criticism from the media? Because that's quite an accusation.

Yeah, I live in Spain and I can see it happening, but I won't believe it until there's something more than hearsay.
 
Vlodril

Vlodril

Member
Funky Papa said:
Check this image



I looked for "housing prices" and the latest news (prior Google News' closure) showed up mixed with the search's results. This was a huge boon for newspapers. Now they are totally fucked.


I have to wonder where you lived. He's been one of the least liked politicians for a good while. Nearly every non-party member hates his guts these days.
Click to expand...

yea i meant down in a negative not a positive way. i lived on the border with gib.
 
kruis

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Funky Papa said:
Check this image

I looked for "housing prices" and the latest news (prior Google News' closure) showed up mixed with the search's results. This was a huge boon for newspapers. Now they are totally fucked.
Click to expand...

And of course, this law not only applies to Google but every other search engine/aggregator service. If Google can't/won't pay, you can be damn sure no one will. So Spanish newspaper articles will be impossible to find on the Internet in 2015.

How come no Spanish politician could foresee this? Such incredible shortsightedness ...
 
IISANDERII

IISANDERII

Member
bachikarn said:
Does Google make any money directly off of Google News?
Click to expand...
OP says it does: "Their reasoning behind the farce was fairly transparent: Google profits from linking to our articles, so we need to receive a compensation as content creators"

Not sure how[I assume advertising], I tend to believe that Google don't do things for free. Whatever the case, Spain just shot themselves in the foot.
 
D

dramatis

Member
Battersea Power Station said:
So this actually changes the search algorithm? That's odd. How does it distinguish what's news? Like if I search for a 5 year old plane crash story, will it omit results that old from The Spanish Times or whatever? Or is it only about this week's events? I'd love to see some examples.
Click to expand...
They don't have to change the search algorithm, they can just screen for any results from a Spanish newspaper and then not put it into the displayed results.
 
Q

Quixzlizx

Member
IISANDERII said:
OP says it does: "Their reasoning behind the farce was fairly transparent: Google profits from linking to our articles, so we need to receive a compensation as content creators"

Not sure how[I assume advertising], I tend to believe that Google don't do things for free. Whatever the case, Spain just shot themselves in the foot.
Click to expand...

I don' t think you read the whole OP, or understood it correctly.
 
Acidote

Acidote

Member
Actually, the Google News newsfeed had no ads at all. Official word:

Google News in Spain

We’re incredibly sad to announce that, due to recent changes in Spanish law, we have removed Spanish publishers from Google News and closed Google News in Spain. We understand that readers like you may be disappointed, too, and we want to share the reasons behind this decision.

Google News is a free service, loved and trusted by hundreds of millions of users around the world and available in more than 70 international editions, covering 35 languages. It includes everything from the world’s biggest newspapers to small, local publications and bloggers. Publishers can choose whether or not they want their articles to appear in Google News -- and the vast majority choose to be included for very good reason. Google News creates real value for these publications by driving people to their websites, which in turn helps generate advertising revenues.

But sadly, as a result of a new Spanish law, we had to close Google News in Spain. This legislation requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not. As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the site) this new approach was not sustainable.

We remain committed to helping the news industry meet challenges and look forward to continuing to work with our thousands of partners globally, as well as in Spain, to help them increase their online readership and revenues.
Click to expand...
 
F

Fireblend

Banned
dramatis said:
They don't have to change the search algorithm, they can just screen for any results from a Spanish newspaper and then not put it into the displayed results.
Click to expand...

I believe their webpages/articles are still indexed and searchable with the main Google search, it's just they aren't indexed or searchable within Google News. The search algorithm isn't going to exclude anything.

As I pointed to above, the google news integration thing within search results is just a context-aware "section" that appears whenever you're searching for a news-related keyword. That's where the Spanish news articles won't appear.
 
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