After a seven year hiatus, Google News is finally making its way back to users across Spain.
While the reintroduction of Google News sounds like a relatively simple matter (just add the feature back in, right?), the circumstances surrounding its previous exit are complex, to say the least. Specifically, a Royal Decree which affects the country's copyright laws is what it took to allow News back into Spain's borders. But why the complications? Well, let us all turn the clocks around and go back to December, 2014.
2014 was a relatively simpler time for Google. The Alphabet restructuring was in the works, with Google and YouTube themselves becoming subsidiaries of a larger parent company. Overall, the Search engine corporation was doing very well for itself, with News being a rather lucrative source of information for users, and revenue for itself. However, the feature was suddenly and rather abruptly pulled for users in the country, without much explanation or fanfare. The reason was that Google saw a law in the making and bailed when the going was good
The law being referred to ended up being implemented a few months after Google News was pulled for Spain users. It stated that Google and other such countries will have to pay any and all journalists within the country if their articles were at any point featured. This, being undesirable to Google, led to News being discontinued altogether by the company. However, a recent change by the EU's overarching laws over online publications has led to this payment process becoming voluntary. Now, Google can choose to pay journalists for using their headlines.
A similar problem was recently encountered in Australia for the company, where the government stated that if local publishers and authors weren't compensated for their work being published by News, the company would face trouble existing in said country altogether. Google even threatened to leave Australia of its own volition. No further moves have been made by either party however, and the situation still remains slightly tense.
Google even has plans on introducing it's new Newsroom feature to Spain, which was another move that Australia was rather adamantly against. Then again, maybe Spain just wants social media revenue in its country to go up again, even if the resultant price is not paying it's own journalists.
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While the reintroduction of Google News sounds like a relatively simple matter (just add the feature back in, right?), the circumstances surrounding its previous exit are complex, to say the least. Specifically, a Royal Decree which affects the country's copyright laws is what it took to allow News back into Spain's borders. But why the complications? Well, let us all turn the clocks around and go back to December, 2014.
2014 was a relatively simpler time for Google. The Alphabet restructuring was in the works, with Google and YouTube themselves becoming subsidiaries of a larger parent company. Overall, the Search engine corporation was doing very well for itself, with News being a rather lucrative source of information for users, and revenue for itself. However, the feature was suddenly and rather abruptly pulled for users in the country, without much explanation or fanfare. The reason was that Google saw a law in the making and bailed when the going was good
The law being referred to ended up being implemented a few months after Google News was pulled for Spain users. It stated that Google and other such countries will have to pay any and all journalists within the country if their articles were at any point featured. This, being undesirable to Google, led to News being discontinued altogether by the company. However, a recent change by the EU's overarching laws over online publications has led to this payment process becoming voluntary. Now, Google can choose to pay journalists for using their headlines.
A similar problem was recently encountered in Australia for the company, where the government stated that if local publishers and authors weren't compensated for their work being published by News, the company would face trouble existing in said country altogether. Google even threatened to leave Australia of its own volition. No further moves have been made by either party however, and the situation still remains slightly tense.
Google even has plans on introducing it's new Newsroom feature to Spain, which was another move that Australia was rather adamantly against. Then again, maybe Spain just wants social media revenue in its country to go up again, even if the resultant price is not paying it's own journalists.