Google just removed its new previews in France to not pay publishers for it anymore. Google will be cutting snippets and image previews unless the publishers allow them to be used by Google. Recently, Richard Gingras, Vice President of News, announced that Google will no longer pay publishers of France for search results and instead it will display limited information for News. Next month France will be enforcing a new rule based on Europe’s copyright law and according to Google, it will not be displaying any overview of content in France for European press publishers unless the publisher informs Google that the content is okay to post.
According to Google, publishers will receive new webmaster settings that will enable them to only allow specific information they want to preview in News results. The new Copyright Directive law in France makes the platforms including Facebook, YouTube, and Google legally answerable for the content they upload on their platforms. These tech giants will be required to also check for any violations according to the new rule and the news aggregators will also be required to pay for the snipped beyond individual words or short extracts.
France was among one of the nations that strongly pushed others for new rules and it is the first country to even implement these rules as well. According to the publishers of France, Google is profiting by displaying portions of publisher content for free and making publishers lose around 250 million to 320 million euros per year.
Google products are being used by so many websites for advertising which includes news publishers where the publishers generate ad revenue of huge amount. In 2018, Google paid more than $14.5 billion to publishers, globally.
When Google stated that it will no longer be displaying any news snippets in Spain Joy de Looz-Corswarem from the European Newspaper Publisher stated that the publishers are failing to generate any revenue via Google and this response from Google was something that was expected so now the European News Publisher Association will have to look at other legal aspects to take action against Google.
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According to Google, publishers will receive new webmaster settings that will enable them to only allow specific information they want to preview in News results. The new Copyright Directive law in France makes the platforms including Facebook, YouTube, and Google legally answerable for the content they upload on their platforms. These tech giants will be required to also check for any violations according to the new rule and the news aggregators will also be required to pay for the snipped beyond individual words or short extracts.
France was among one of the nations that strongly pushed others for new rules and it is the first country to even implement these rules as well. According to the publishers of France, Google is profiting by displaying portions of publisher content for free and making publishers lose around 250 million to 320 million euros per year.
Response from Google
Google was accused of profiting by displaying portion of publisher content and Google responded by stating that its snippet helps publishers rather than harm them and according to Google, eight billion website visits are sent to news sites in Europe alone and it doesn’t accept any payment from any publisher to be included in its search results. Google only sell ads and not the search results and the sponsored ads on Google are always marked clearly. So, paying publishers when people click on their links in search results is something that will most likely never happen.Google products are being used by so many websites for advertising which includes news publishers where the publishers generate ad revenue of huge amount. In 2018, Google paid more than $14.5 billion to publishers, globally.
When Google stated that it will no longer be displaying any news snippets in Spain Joy de Looz-Corswarem from the European Newspaper Publisher stated that the publishers are failing to generate any revenue via Google and this response from Google was something that was expected so now the European News Publisher Association will have to look at other legal aspects to take action against Google.
Conclusion
Google is one of the largest platforms with billions of users engaged on the platform on daily basis, this accusation by the France publishers is something that needs to be taken care of because the reduction in News in France is something that might affect us all.Read next: Google will no longer use Assistant recordings without users’ consent
