Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOGL) has reopened Google News in Spain after eight years following the suspension of the service in the country after Spanish authorities forced the search engine giant and other aggregators to pay publishers if they use snippets of their content in the news.
Google News is making a comeback in Spain.
In 2014, Google News shut down after Spain established a law requiring Alphabet and other news sites to pay a collective license fee to reproduce headlines or bits of news.
Madrid enacted legislation last year incorporating the updated 2020 European Union copyright regulations, enabling media organizations to negotiate directly with the internet giant. The action prompted Google to declare last year that Google News would return this year.
Iberia VP Fuencisla Clemares said in a blog post, “Today, on the global 20th anniversary of Google News, and after an almost eight-year hiatus, Google News is returning to Spain.”
She explained that Alphabet was planning to unveil Google News Showcase in the country, which is a vehicle for paying subscribers.
Clemares added, “Over the coming months, we will be working with publishers to reach agreements which cover their rights under the new law.”
EU passes a law that allows companies to negotiate individual contracts
The European Union law its member states must ratify requires platforms such as Google and Facebook, among others, to give a percentage of their revenue to publishers. Still, it also does away with the collective fees. As a result, this gives the companies an option to negotiate individual and group agreements with publishers.
Mainstream media, which supported the traditional system, was pitted against the latest generation of online publications, who anticipated more financial rewards from direct contracts with Google and the other media platforms than from their portion of the collective charge in the battle over Google News.
The new legislation delighted Arsenio Escolar, leader of the CLABE publishers association, which represents 1,000 primarily online news sources, including well-known digital brands like El Espanol and Eldiario.es.
