Google’s Test To Hide EU Publisher News In The EU Faces Backlash

In 2019, the European Union published its European Union Copyright Directive (EUCD), which focuses on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market.

The idea of this directive was to set guidelines and rules for how copyrighted content was shared on online platforms and how publishers were to be protected, which was primarily covered by the Directive’s Article 15, AKA “neighboring right”.

One of the key aspects of this article is that press publications would be compensated for when digital and online platforms used excerpts from their content.

This includes global search engine leader Google, which recently revealed it was conducting a test to gather extensive data on how the news results of EU-based publishers impact users in the European Union.

The test builds on a program introduced by Google three years ago, which looked to comply with the new laws set in place at the time while also displaying additional content that “goes beyond links and short extracts” through its Extended News Previews initiative. The move included agreements with publishers across the EU.

As such, through this licensing program, Google remains the first company to implement a program that complies with the EUDC and enables publishers of all sizes to benefit from it.

Today, Google has agreements with over 4,000 publications across 20 countries in the EU, spanning individual publishers and collecting societies (groups that help manage publisher rights), and it’s these publishers and regulators that are seeking additional data regarding the performance of news content on Google’s products.

The test is intended to be a small, short-duration test that will impact only 1% of users in Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain.

This group won’t be shown results from EU-based news publishers in Google News, Search, and Discover. However, they will be able to view results from other websites, including news publishers from outside the EU.

The idea is to assess how EU news publishers impact the search experience and how much traffic they really generate. This will also help determine how much compensation online platforms must provide EU publishers for reusing their content.

However, this move by Google has garnered major backlash, especially from France.

Source

Google’s experiment was planned to include French users too, that was until the Paris Commercial Court stepped in with objections.

In an order issued by the specialized court, one that was made at the request of the Syndicate of Magazine Press Editors or SEPM (Le Syndicat des Editeurs de la Presse Magazine), the Paris Commercial Court moved to suspend Google’s experiment.

Technically, the order provided Google an option to conduct the test, which would come in the form of paying a €900,000 per day fine.

Google chose the former, instead of adding to its existing fine of €250 million fine by the Competition Authority last March for failure to comply with its commitments.

Currently, Google’s experiment will be conducted in eight countries, rather than the originally planned nine. That is unless other countries raise objections.

Do you think Google’s test should be a given a “go ahead” or do you think the experiment will hamper publishers in the EU?

Let us know in the comments below!

First published on Mon, Nov 18, 2024

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