Google to Stop Publishing German Newspaper Extracts - WSJ http://online.wsj.com/articles/google-to-stop-publishing-german-newspap... Dow Jones Reprints: This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com See a sample reprint in PDF Order a reprint of this article now format. TECHNOLOGY Search Giant to Avoid Paying Publishing Rights Following Change in Law By SAM SCHECHNER Oct. 2, 2014 10:27 a.m. ET Google has been in a long-running legal battle over a new German law that obliges the company to secure permission to display publishers’ content.. Associated Press Google Inc. will stop posting snippets from several large German newspapers beginning next week, rather than pay for the right to post them, escalating a fight with the country’s publishers amid broader pressure on the company in Europe. On Wednesday Google said it would stop displaying both text summaries and thumbnail images from newspapers including Axel Springer SE ’s Bild—the country’s most widely sold—because of a continuing legal fight over a new German law that obliges the company to secure permission to display publishers’ content. “Given this litigation, we’ll no longer be showing snippets and thumbnails for some well-known sites (in Germany),” Philipp Justus, managing director of Google Germany, said in a blog post, adding Google 1 of 2 10/3/2014 11:39 AM Google to Stop Publishing German Newspaper Extracts - WSJ http://online.wsj.com/articles/google-to-stop-publishing-german-newspap... “works hard” to help newspapers. The group representing the newspapers concerned—which have been seeking payment from Google—said the move amounted to blackmail. “It’s obviously Google’s aim to force the publishers to agree to free use of content,” the group said. The escalation is the latest front in a broader war that Google is fighting in Europe. Pressure in Germany and France has all but undone the U.S.-based company’s proposed settlement of antitrust complaints that it faces in WSJD is the Journal’s home for tech news, Brussels. European privacy regulators are ordering it to analysis and product reviews. unbundle the services it offers together. And European tax Carriers Offer ‘Double the Data’ to Poach Users cops and politicians are looking at how to force it to pay Angry Birds Maker to Cut 16% of Workforce more corporate taxes. EBay Minus PayPal: Slower Growth, More Competition The fight with newspapers is one of Google’s longest- Which States Make You Pay Amazon Sales lasting struggles. On and off for the better part of a decade, Tax papers have argued Google is undermining their brands and siphoning their ad revenue by making itself a home page for their content. Google says that such claims are nonsense, and that the company instead directs huge volumes of readers—and therefore adds dollars—to news sites. In Germany, a new law obliges the company to secure rights to publish anything other than links to articles and headlines. Google declined to pay for those rights, but gave publishers a choice: offer them for free or face the removal of snippets and thumbnails from its services like Google News. Many publishers, including Der Spiegel agreed, Google said. But several others including Axel Springer banded together to push for payment. The fight echoes those that have already occurred in Belgium and France, without Google paying for links. In Belgium in 2012, Google settled a six-year copyright dispute with publishers that at one point had led Google to remove some papers from its search products rather than pay for links. In France, papers agitated for a similar law to the one in Germany. Under government pressure, Google later settled with newspapers by creating a €60 million ($75.7 million) fund to help the papers modernize. Spain meanwhileis currentlyconsidering a similar law to Germany’s. That proposal seeks to raise some €80 million in annual tax revenue for the cash-strapped local media industry, but has faced criticism. —Friedrich Geiger contributed to this article. Write to Sam Schechner at [email protected] Copyright 2014 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com 2 of 2 10/3/2014 11:39 AM.