According to a report published by Bloomberg yesterday, Google may pull its Google News service from Europe. This decision is dependent on a controversial copyright law that is in the process of being finalized. This law that is being worked on by European regulators will give publishers the right to demand money from Google and other web platforms when fragments of their articles show up in news search results or are shared by users. Moreover, these rules would also require Google and Facebook to actively prevent music, videos, and other copyrighted content from appearing on their platforms unless the rights holders grant them a license.
On the basis of “a close reading of the rules “, Jennifer Bernal, Google’s public policy manager for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa; says that Google News might quit the continent if regulators are successful in implementing this law.
What does this move mean to Google and other Publishers?
Google states that its news service does not earn the company any direct revenue. So, pulling Google News out of Europe wouldn’t mean much to the tech giant. However, news publishers would be affected to a certain extent. This is because publishers earn money through advertisements in search results. Passing the law would mean that Google will have to choose the publishers that it would license. Bloomberg points out that since bigger publishers offer a broader range of popular content, smaller competitors are likely to lose out on the license and eventually on the revenue.
This is not the first time Google has found itself at crossroads. Bloomberg details a similar incident in 2014 when Google shut its news service after a law was passed requiring Spanish publications to charge aggregators for displaying excerpts of stories. While Google remained financially unaffected by this move, small publishers lost about 13 percent of their web traffic, according to a 2017 study released by the Spanish Association of Publishers of Periodical Publications.
While the proposal was scheduled to be finalized on Monday, lawmakers failed to come to an agreement and the legislation has been stalled for now.
You can head over to Bloomberg for more insights on this news.
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