German Publsiher Axel Speringer's Deal with Google

(11/7/2014) For many content publishers, google's dominance in the search engine market is too big to compete or even negotiate. Google's search engine and news site are known for indexing online contents without 'paying' the publisher. As German's court ruled that "publishers can prohibit search engines and similar services from using their news articles beyond headlines" and Axel Springer did just that. In the last several weeks, they did not allow google to run snippets to grasps their content and Google complied. Google stopped showing some contents from its search engine and news site. The result is a disaster to Axel Springer: "traffic flowing from clicks on Google search results had fallen by 40 percent and traffic delivered via Google News had plummeted by 80 percent in the past two weeks."

Springer caved in. They allow Google to index their content in snippet and show their content online when users search by keywords. However, Springer is not happy at all. They hope "lawmakers, courts and competition regulators would take action to curb its (Google's) powers."

Spain just passed a new copyright law saying "post links to news articles or excerpts from them will have to pay a fee to the Association of Editors of Spanish Dailies." If Germany cannot even fight with Google, do you think Spain will eventually win this battle?

Axel Springer's example reflects the dilemma many traditional publishers are facing. More and more access content through the Internet via a search engine like Google (or others if they can be competitive). The publishers pay the salaries for the journalist and have huge overhead running publishing business. Google have ad revenue from user's every search; the publisher's content has to compete with other contents on the display order of search result. Blocking Google or other search engine is just shooting one's own feet.

Axel Springer: "I have no choice. Shutting Google's snippet, we will be out of the market."

(12/11/2014) Who will win in the dispute of Spain's new copyright tax? Google or Spain? Google's reaction is shutting down its news website that use news sources coming from Spanish publishers. It will seriously decrease the website traffic for these publishers if they don't allow Google to list their articles 'free' on Google News. What is fairness in this dispute?