Alphabet plans to reopen its Google News service in Spain early next year after the government passed new legislation allowing digital media to negotiate directly with the tech giant, as the company announced just a few days ago. .
The service closed in 2014 after the government, headed by the then president, Mariano Rajoy, approved a rule that forced Alphabet and other news aggregators to pay a collective license fee to be able to publish headlines or news fragments in Internet services in our country.
Google News will return to Spain in early 2022
Through a statement made public, both through its website and its social networks, Google announced that “at the beginning of next year, Google News will once again provide links and text fragments of the most relevant news in Spain” . Immediately, this information was corroborated by the national manager of Google Spain , Fuencisla Clemares, for which the return of Google News to our country after seven years of forced absence was made totally official. “In the coming months, we will work with publishers to reach agreements that cover their rights under the new law,” Clemares added.
The government approved a copyright directive a few days ago in line with the standards of the European Union in this matter, which allows third-party online news platforms to negotiate directly with content providers, that is, from now the media will be allowed to negotiate directly with Google, without any kind of government intermediary.
EU legislation, which must be adopted by all member states, requires platforms such as Google, Facebook and others to share revenue with publishers, but also eliminates the collective fee and allows them to reach individual or group agreements with publishers. media and creators of informational content , also those who make audiovisual information (mainly videos and podcasts).
The Google News debate had pitted traditional media outlets (mainly paper newspapers and radio stations), which supported the old system, against a new generation of online media, who hoped to get much more revenue from deals and direct negotiations with Alphabet and the other platforms that through the payment of that collective fee that Google was obliged to pay since 2014.
Arsenio Escolar, president of the CLABE publishers association, which groups around 1,000 media outlets, mainly online, including leading digital brands such as El Español and Eldiario.es , has assured that he was satisfied with this new legislation that Google News was vetoing in Spain .
The Asociación de Medios de Información (AMI), which mainly represents the old guard of traditional media in Spain, was also in favor of maintaining the old system, and was quite against the new norm.
