News publishers vs Google war intensifies as European Commission reviews whether to introduce 'snippet tax'
The European Commission is to examine whether Google News should pay newspapers for displaying snippets of their articles after a handful of leading news publishers argued that the tech giant was profiting from their content for free.
New copyright proposals unveiled by the commission will “consider whether any action specific to news aggregators is needed”. It comes in response to concerns from a number of Europe’s largest publishers that Google News was holding them to ransom and profiting from their copyrighted content.
Google has consistently argued that its ad-free Google News service generates revenue to newspapers through the huge volume of traffic it sends them.
If passed Google would be forced to pay a “snippet tax” for showing quotes from copyrighted content, such as news articles.
Andrus Ansip, the commissioner who oversees the EU’s digital policy, was quick to point out that a fee would not be introduced for simply linking to articles.
Ansip told the FT that “this commission does not have any plans to tax hyperlinks” and added that there was a difference between linking to articles and “new products and intermediaries where people are making money”.
Some EU member states have already experimented with a “snippet tax” such as Spain which introduced the law last year, a move which saw Google respond by shutting down its news services. Germany’s Axel Springer prevented its content from being shown on Google News last year, before reversing the decision after traffic to its websites plummeted.
A spokesperson for Google told the FT: “The internet creates tremendous opportunities for news publishers to reach more readers — but it also brings challenges. A tax on snippets is not a viable answer to those challenges, as the experience in Germany and Spain shows — it is not good for publishers."
The relationship between Google and European publishers has increasingly deteriorated in recent years with news organisations widely accusing the Silicon Valley firm of acting unfairly by distorting search results to promote its own products and services.
In what has been viewed as an olive branch to Europe's media, Google announced a €150m (£109m) European Journalism fund intended to help news publishers throughout Europe develop new digital projects.
The rapid development of broadband and mobile has revolutionised the media industry since the EU’s copyright regulations were created and so it is likely that they will have to be increasingly reviewed to ensure publishers revenue is not unfairly affected.