Google Refuses to Pay for News Links in France

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From The Wall Street Journal:

Google said it would refuse to pay for licenses for previews of French news articles when the European Union’s new copyright directive goes into effect here next month, the first concrete signal for how the Alphabet Inc. unit plans to implement the divisive measure.

Rather than paying, Google said it would show only headlines in news results, as permitted under the new copyright law, unless a publication gives Google additional permission to show preview text and thumbnail images for free.

“We don’t pay for links to be included in search results. Doing so would not only skew the results we might provide but it would undermine the trust that users have in search and Google,” Richard Gingras, Google’s vice president of news, said in a conference call with reporters.

Link to the rest at The Wall Street Journal (Sorry if you encounter a paywall)

PG suggests that the European newspapers have more influence over European Union politicians than Google does.

PG further suggests that Google understands more about what drives click-throughs than the European newspaper executives do. PG further suggests that the newspapers will cave before Google does.

6 thoughts on “Google Refuses to Pay for News Links in France”

  1. We’ve already seen this before – Google ran the numbers and there’s not enough money in the news to make it worth paying for. Expect the EU to go VPN to non-EU site crazy after the rules takes affect as there won’t be anything to see/find on EU sites.

  2. Google thinks I trust them not to skew the results of a search? I think it’s already been proven that they do. So the trust they’re looking to protect is already heavily compromised.

    • PG, How do I ‘like’ Suzie Quint’s comment?

      PS I no longer google anything. Someone on this site introduced me to duckduckgo. It is my default search engine. I use no other. (Kinda cool, I think, being offered options in German.)

      • Does duckduckgo have any legal presence in Europe? If not they can ignore the new law and post preview text saying it’s fair use (or whatever) but this may end up with them being blocked by European ISPs? Maybe I’ll still need a VPN for something other than US sites that don’t want the bother of complying with the GDPR.

        • While I use duckduckgo, I’ve found far too often it can’t find what I’m looking for, trying the same search on google finds what I’m after. (so I try one and if needed the other …)

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