Megalith
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Due to the region’s plans to charge a “link tax” for using news stories, Google’s news service may no longer be available in the EU. Richard Gingras, the search engine’s vice-president of news, suggests it could very well happen unless the phrasing of the legislation is altered in some way. The law is meant to “compensate struggling news publishers if snippets of their articles appear in search results.”
He pointed out the last time a government attempted to charge Google for links, in 2014 in Spain, the company responded by shutting down Google News in the country. Spain passed a law requiring aggregation sites to pay for news links, in a bid to prop up struggling print news outlets. Google responded by closing the service for Spanish consumers, which he said prompted a fall in traffic to Spanish news websites.
He pointed out the last time a government attempted to charge Google for links, in 2014 in Spain, the company responded by shutting down Google News in the country. Spain passed a law requiring aggregation sites to pay for news links, in a bid to prop up struggling print news outlets. Google responded by closing the service for Spanish consumers, which he said prompted a fall in traffic to Spanish news websites.