Google backing down indicating payments to publishers

Author Moonshot.news

Published on: 02/11/2021

Google has made a statement about how it plans to proceed negotiating with European publishers as the new EU-wide copyright directive is implemented in national legislation. The company said it is “making offers for Extended News Previews, to cover the display of content from news publishers that goes beyond links and short extracts”.

This indicates Google is now willing to pay publishers for showing more information in search results than just basics. Google has a large part of its income from advertising in connection with search results based on publishers’ journalistic content.

“Where possible, these offers take into account a publication’s readership, the “journalistic nature” of press publications (meaning the focus a publication has on producing journalism compared to other content) and editorial investment”, Sulina Connal, Director, News and Publishing Partnerships says in a blog post.

The statement indicates that Google in the negotiations will consider the size and audience reach of the publisher and how much of the publisher’s production that is journalistic content.

COPYRIGHT DIRECTIVE

The EU copyright directive is on its way of being implemented in all member states’ national legislation. Basically, it says that big tech should pay for commercial use of publishers’ journalistic content for instance by publishing advertising in connection with search results.

When the copyright directive was approved by the European parliament, Google originally said it would only use content from publishers who did not insist on getting paid. For others, Google would just publish very short basics.

PROTESTS

Publishers protested saying that with Google’s market power, being excluded or forced to give permission to its content for free meant Google was abusing its power as stated in EU legislation.

France, that was the first European country to implement the copyright directive in national legislation, because a test case. After months of negotiations, French antitrust authority instructed Google to reach an agreement with all publishers, not only with those that Google was interested in paying for content to its Google News Showcase service.

The now published Google statement should be seen with this as a background.

NEGOTIATIONS

“Countries in the European Union are currently in the process of implementing the European Copyright Directive, which includes Article 15 or the “neighbouring right”, into national law. Developed and debated over many years, the Directive gives new rights to news publishers online while ensuring that consumers can continue to freely access information through online platforms. As countries implement this new law, we have started negotiations with news publishers to license content under these new rights”, Connal writes.

“The Directive provides two important guiding principles. On the one hand, people and platforms can continue to link to, and include, very short extracts of publishers’ content (referred to as the snippet exemption or snippet exception in Germany). At the same time, the law creates new rights for news publishers when extended previews of their work are used online.”

“While the law in most countries does not define the scope of protected content, we have already started discussions with hundreds of news publishers across countries including Germany, Hungary, France, Denmark and the Netherlands where the law is now in effect”, Connal says also stressing that publishers benefit from traffic to their sites created by Google services.