
Google News to shut down in Spain - apsec112
http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2014/12/an-update-on-google-news-in-spain.html?m=1
======
carlesfe
I wrote a bit about this in July, when the law was passed, if you want an
opinion from a Spaniard: [http://cfenollosa.com/blog/spanish-media-just-shot-
themselve...](http://cfenollosa.com/blog/spanish-media-just-shot-themselves-
in-the-foot----or-maybe-in-the-head.html)

    
    
      Let's summarize what is happening here:
    
      Big media editors AEDE, most of which pro-government, in collusion with the 
      corrupt Spanish politicians have managed a masterstroke which they think will:
    
      1. Get them free money
      2. Destroy the discoverability of smaller media competitors, usually critical 
      with the government
      3. Hinder the future of Spanish internet tech business, their main competitor
      4. Get more exposure, since readers won't have access to media agreggation and 
      will resort to reading just one or two outlets
    
      In reality, what is likely to happen is:
    
      1. Google will close Google News Spain, no big problem
      2. Spanish media aggregators will move their business abroad and won't 
      contribute taxes to the country
      3. Tech enterpreneurs will realize that Spain is a shitty country to invest money on
      4. Without Google, the aggregators, and thanks to the increasing 
      user boycott to AEDE media, those editors will lose traffic and money.

~~~
SiVal
According to the article:

 _This new legislation requires every Spanish publication to charge services
like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their
publications, whether they want to or not._

This sounds as though it won't matter if Spanish news aggregators move abroad,
because the law applies to the Spanish news sources themselves, not the
aggregator. Unless I'm misunderstanding (and maybe I am, so correct me), if a
news publisher inside Spain doesn't demand payment from an aggregator located
outside Spain, the publisher in Spain gets punished by the Spanish law.

This approach would be a nasty way to do as you said: limit the ability of
smaller, alternative news sources, to attract readers. Unless they left Spain,
they would not be allowed to volunteer their content to any free aggregator
anywhere, and if they DID leave Spain, they would lose the ability to report
on local Spanish issues.

~~~
mcv
That is exactly the market opportunity I'm seeing here: news sites for Spanish
news that are based outside Spain. Reporting on issues abroad is still
possible, and they may even be able to hire freelancers based in Spain.

Or to put it another way: with no way to find Spanish news sites online,
Spaniards would become entirely dependent on foreign news sites, which creates
an incentive for foreign sites to focus more on Spanish news in Spanish.

~~~
muyuu
The main media in Spain will start hosting sites abroad to bypass this law.
This law is basically a way to hinder smaller media more than collecting money
from Google, and in this respect I guess it will work.

~~~
jasonisalive
It's always the small fish who suffer the most from socialist policies. Only
large organisations can justify the resources to out-maneuever punitive
legislation.

It's a shame that this irony isn't more widely understood.

~~~
radio4fan
While I have no opinion either way on your post, I felt that I should point
out that Spain's government is not socialist.

The party in power (Partido Popular) is on the right of Spanish politics, and
sits with the right wing EPP group in the European Parliament.

For what it's worth, while the US tends to think of Europe as being socialist,
I can't think of any EU countries with socialist governments except Austria
and Denmark.

~~~
vsl
That Partido Popular brands itself as right doesn’t necessarily make it so.
This policy does show the typically socialist “let’s regulate everything and
remove choice” approach.

> I can't think of any EU countries with socialist governments except Austria
> and Denmark.

Off the top of my head, France, Czech Republic or Slovakia. And the _previous_
Czech government was a prime example of a left-leaning gov. in anything but
name.

------
rsync
Things are going very badly for a global internet if we are discussing a web
site "shutting down in spain".

Of course we all know what that means and it seems very sensible in 2014, but
remember - if someone had told you in 1998 that a certain website would not be
operating in country X, you would have laughed and explained to them (like a
child) that the Internet was a single global network and that if one had
Internet access _at all_ they would have access to the site in question.

All of that simplicity and innocence has slipped away.

~~~
rgbrenner
Just to be clear, Google is subject to this law because Google operates and
has offices in Spain.

It seems reasonable that Google should comply with the laws of where they do
business.

~~~
wtbob
But the law itself does not seem reasonable. It's a violation of fair use.

Lest we forget, Google News _links to the articles themselves_. It provides a
service to news organisations, for—as far as I'm aware—free.

~~~
waps
Uh ? Fair use is (part of) a law. Laws are not subject to fair use. You are
subject to laws, and yes, this changes some aspects of the legal concept that
is called fair use (quotation rights), and that simply changes fair use.

Quoting Spanish news sources should no longer be considered fair use inside of
Spain.

~~~
eigenvector
The doctrine of fair dealing, which is similar but more restrictive than fair
use, exists in several Commonwealth countries: Canada, Australia, New Zealand
and South Africa are the ones I know of.

------
kh_hk
"the worse the better", I am happy about this.

Articles about this have been going around Spanish news aggregators for a
while. Now that there's an official statement from Google, message will
finally go around the world showing what kind of stupid laws the Spanish
government is passing around with the influence of the powerful copyright
lobbies.

Now, about the recent Spanish Intellectual Property reform. The particular
reform affecting Google is actually called the AEDE tax. This reform will
affect _any_ news aggregator operating in Spain.

AEDE stands for Asociación de Editores de Diarios Españoles, as in Spanish
Association of Newspaper Editors. This private association, together with
another one called CEDRO, will take care of collecting this tax. Even if your
publication is not associated with AEDE and because this reform is law, they
will have the obligation to collect it.

This reform smells exactly the same as an old anti-piracy law. Just change
AEDE for SGAE (another association, related to authors and editors). For a
while, any kind of media support was subject to this tax. Any media support,
including hard drives and even cameras, on the pretense that these _might_ be
used to store content subject to IP. This law was derogated on 2011, but not
completely. Now it's the state the one who pays this tax to SGAE. I can see
this AEDE tax having poor results, and either the public or the state ending
up having to pay for it.

Funnily enough, this just shows how weird and different some people think.
This tax is proposing that news aggregators cause loss damage to news
producers just as torrent aggregators cause damages to Warner. Note that this
IP reform also includes fines of around 150k to 600k euros for running a site
that links to copyrighted material. Before, it was only an infraction if a
site was causing "significant damages". This has been eliminated, as in, any
damage is a significant damage.

Just as a remark, let's not confuse this with the so-called "Google Tax",
which is related to stopping Google and other big co's from evading taxes in
Europe and has nothing to do with intellectual property. To be fair, I do not
even know by now, as they call "Google tax" anything that is going to affect
Google, nevermind.

~~~
yaeger
This sounds almost exactly what the GEMA is doing in Germany in regards to
music. They get to collect money for songs being made public. Prime example in
the digital age is now youtube. And they also have something called the GEMA
assumption. They do not even need to check if the author or general right
holders to a particular song are represented by them. They do not even need to
check if the song in question is public domain. They can just assume they are
responsible and thus make youtube block basically all music on their site
proactively. And then, an individual can come forward and proof that a
particular song needs to be unblocked cause it is public domain or they hold
the rights to it and they are not associated with GEMA to do their bill
collecting.

In essence, if I were to write a song, record it and put it on youtube and it
gets enough exposure, the GEMA will find it and make youtube to block it
because they did not pay the GEMA for this use. Even though I am not a member
of GEMA and have never told them to be my intellectual property rights
enforcer.

~~~
crucialfelix
My other comment has been down voted, but let me reiterate that you are
factually incorrect. Its not a matter of opinion.

> In essence, if I were to write a song, record it and put it on youtube and
> it gets enough exposure, the GEMA will find it and make youtube to block it
> because they did not pay the GEMA for this use.

Completely and utterly false.

~~~
tankenmate
And it is false because?

~~~
crucialfelix
because GEMA does not find it and block it, YouTube blocks it themselves
because they do not have a legal agreement since 2009.

its also false because it has nothing to do with popularity. I've seen very
small artists getting blocked here because youtube has data identifying them
as a member of any PRO (Performance Rights Organization) that has an agreement
with GEMA to get money collected in Germany and then forwarded to the PRO in
the home country of the artist.

members of other PROs or anybody that does not sign on to a PRO are
unaffected.

I detest GEMA and have protested in the streets against them, but the
statement above is false.

------
jonathansizz
A pertinent quote from the Guardian article on this story:

 _Germany passed a similar law to Spain’s and Google removed newspapers from
Google News in response but in October publishers reached an agreement with
the company after traffic to their websites plummeted._

~~~
jessriedel
Can someone comment on the goal behind designing the Spanish law this way?

I speculate that they consider Google News to have monopolistic power, so that
even if a fair market in snippets would set a finite price Google News would
still use its clout to drive that price to zero by removing individual papers
who tried to charge. A mandatory price would counter act this, similar to the
way that government mandates to publish open access give bargaining power to
the researchers over oligopolies like Nature and Science.

~~~
notatoad
I believe the goal/logic is "we want money. Google has lots of money, we
should try and get some of that"

~~~
lotu
You also have to consider that the publishing industry is really hurting
because of people moving online and the press has a lot of political power.

------
onetimeusename
I am reading through the official law and essentially it is saying that the
Spanish government finds this necessary to reinforce intellectual property
protections, the ip here being the news/stories. The thing that isn't clear
from the law was whether anyone had actually complained about what Google was
doing or whether Google was actually found violating any ip laws in place(it
doesn't seem so). The whole thing is 40 pages so I probably won't read it all.
Can anyone clarify if there had been some sort of issue here?

edit: Something that sticks out is that the law dictates how any agreement
involving ip is to be done even if previous agreements are in place in order
to cover costs "equitably". Yet I can't see how Google isn't already
beneficial. The wording suggests Google would be causing damages since damages
can be included in payments under this law.

~~~
ryanhuff
Yes. Newspapers have lobbied the government to impose a "Google Tax".

[http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jul/29/goog...](http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jul/29/google-
spain)

~~~
onetimeusename
From what I can tell, that seems to sum up the law pretty well.

------
franciscop
Things are getting pretty _freaky_ around here in Spain. We've got some
horrible (freedom-wise) laws passed recently and we're all angry about them.
They've been trying to for several years, and now that people is tired of
fighting these stupid laws back they can pass them. This basically means that
Google would need to pay to index newspapers.

~~~
adventured
As an American I watch Europe pretty closely, and I've seen some things that
are worrisome such as increasing amounts of fascism (anti-freedom / anti-
privacy)... but, things seem to be getting pretty freaky almost everywhere,
freedom seems to be on the retreat globally.

For Spain, speaking sociologically, how long can an advanced country have
30%-35% real unemployment, before there are severely destabilizing effects
that tumble out of that (culturally, politically and so on). Greece is facing
a similar context and similar extreme unemployment problems. I would think it
dramatically increases the risk of getting dangerous politicians that start
making fantastical promises, with voters increasingly willing to buy into
them.

There has been a near total collapse across Europe of the system of promises
that were made, that support the premise of the modern welfare state. Only a
few countries have been spared (either partially or totally), such as Norway,
Sweden, Finland, etc. France's economy for example is smaller than it was in
2004 inflation adjusted. GDP for the whole of Europe is still below 2007
levels. Even Finland's per capita GDP hasn't increased since 1990 inflation
adjusted. How long can such stagnation continue before there are severe
consequences.

~~~
ddebernardy
> As an American I watch Europe pretty closely, and I've seen some things that
> are worrisome such as increasing amounts of fascism (anti-freedom / anti-
> privacy)...

As a European who watches the US, I hope the irony of your statement has not
escaped you.

The NSA, the Can-Spam act, the TSA, Guantanamo Bay, how Obama gave a kill
order on a US citizen without due process, how the hardline christian right
and hardline libertarians across the pond would make most of our local extreme
right wing clowns look like socialists, how some major libertarian voices in
financial news are regularly cheerleading whacky anti-Europeans, the list
could go on ad nauseam.

> Even Finland's per capita GDP hasn't increased since 1990 inflation
> adjusted. How long can such stagnation continue before there are severe
> consequences.

Doesn't sound so dire... The main reason that inflation-adjusted income has
increased in the average US family unit since the 1970s is that it went from
one bread earner to two. (See e.g. Elizabeth Warren's research on debt or her
books, for instance The Two Income Trap, for the gory details.) I'm not seeing
pitchforks.

In more seriousness, this is not meant to be a contest. The point is that
things aren't as bad on the continent as you might read in Anglo-Saxon news
outlets.

There's some uneasiness and some distress, sure. Here, like on the other side
of the pond, the main cause of it at the end of the day is economic woes, most
of which stem from bailing out the well connected instead of having let the
financial system collapse -- for better or worse.

The most important take away, imho, is that we're at peace. Consider... Since
the fall of Rome, we had been almost constantly at war with each other.
Whereas besides the Balkans in the 1990s, and the ongoing skirmishes in
Crimea, there has been no war here since WW2. That's the longest period of
peace between Europe's major powers in history. And thankfully, no ending of
this streak is on anyone's radar.

~~~
adventured
"As a European who watches the US, I hope the irony of your statement has not
escaped you."

There's no irony in fact. I didn't claim the US condition was X Y or Z.

There's nothing ironic about a heart disease patient pointing out the
condition of another heart disease patient. Nor does pointing such out, imply
that the observer is lacking of heart disease.

Your reach is a failure of the application of logic. Just because I note that
Europe has X problem, that does not mean I automatically think the US is
lacking in X problem. Your response was emotional, the classic need to point
out another's flaws because your flaws were pointed out. I get that.

I don't get my European news from Fox or CNN. And I pay close attention to the
economic data coming from just about every country in Europe. I'd argue I'm
likely better versed on the economics of most every country in Europe than
most Europeans.

~~~
ddebernardy
Well... it was emotional indeed, but to my credit your own post could just as
well have been understood (no offense meant) as an "everything is perfect over
here at home, but hey look at how things are over there!" kind of statement.
Which, admittedly, rubbed me the wrong way, knowing all too well how frequent
that type of statement is in Anglo-Saxon news outlets -- particularly in the
economic sphere.

Anyway, no hard feelings I hope. ;-)

------
jpatokal
TL;DR: _This new legislation requires every Spanish publication to charge
services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their
publications, whether they want to or not. As Google News itself makes no
money (we do not show any advertising on the site) this new approach is simply
not sustainable._

------
AznHisoka
Why can't the just display the headline and no snippet from the article text?
Or does that count as a snippet? But wait... what about the actual organic
search results? Do they have to remove Spanish news articles from that too?

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Google should remove all deep links from the search database. Teach them a
hard lesson.

~~~
exhilaration
Even better: keep the Spanish Google News operating but only link to Latin
American news sources. Spanish citizens still get news in their preferred
language but no traffic goes to domestic media outlets.

~~~
Thimothy
Actually, that's probably what is going to happen. Google news will will
continue operating, just without the spanish sources.

Probably at some point some guy in some country without strong ties to spain
(Probably not south america) is going to wise up, make some kind of spanish-
content-only Reddit from there, and earn a shitton of money from the ads.

~~~
walshemj
Or a Spanish language news paper in the states starts doing an international
section.

~~~
mcv
International? I'd make a Swiss site with Spanish news in Spanish for Spanish
expats in Switzerland. Totally legitimate, but it's probably going to be very
popular with people in Spain looking for national news online.

------
etanol
This is one example of what happens when the population gives absolute power
to a single political party: lobbying paradise. We spaniards have the
politicians we deserve.

~~~
gasull
The similar "Sinde Law", that penalized P2P file-sharing, was approved with
the votes of both PSOE (then in Government) and PP, the two main political
parties.

~~~
calgoo
Yea, 5 minutes before Sinde left office... Just saying.... Anyways, as someone
who lives in spain since 20 years, im so tired of this right winged
politicians that are removing all the socialist's advancements of the last 30
years. Healthcare: Crap. Education: Crap. And still people vote for the same
right winged nuts. But i guess that is what you get when most of your
population never learned any other language then Spanish. TV here is a
horrible mess of crap programming (more less like the UK). I mean, our
political leader refused to meet Media people directly, instead using a plasma
screen to talk to them.

I wish Google would just block all their spanish services starting tomorrow.
Also get MS and others to join in, and block all major internet services to
Spain. I think it is even easier: block facebook and we have half the
political party screaming because they actually have to work.

[Sorry for the rant. Just get so fed up with this BS...]

~~~
gasull
Move abroad. I did. I'm originally from Spain too.

------
mimighost
To be honest, I didn't see who could benefit from this law enforcement. If the
government or whoever drive this believe this would force Google to pay for
the news, they are wrong in the first place. The reason is simple, if Google
pays to Spain, other countries would certainly require it to do the same,
otherwise, why not? So if they are not stupid, the shutdown is what they have
foreseen.

If that is the case, big local newpaper/portal will be happy. Because right
now, there will be more people to buy the real newspaper/visit their site
directly. Maybe they will see to a certain increase in their readership.
However, the trend of information digitization is inevitable. Fundamentally
,internet is more efficient in collecting, organizing and delivering
information than any other media. Eventually everyone will become loser.

I don't know how this is going to end, because law is not something that could
be taken back easily. Hopefully, they will be smart enough to figure out
something to bypass it.

------
eva1984
Interestingly enough, I found myself searching through news.google.es and
using google translate to navigate the local news about impending shutdown of
itself. Pure irony.

This reminds me the situation is actually bilateral. Unlike the precedent
cases, it will block NOT ONLY Spain but also the WHOLE WORLD to access to a
lot of Spanish content. In effect, this is, IMHO, even worse than China's
infamous Great Firewall, which is evil but not stopping google to index local
articles.

------
6t6t6
Something has to be understood.

This is not against Google in particular, is against a tool that helped people
to find news in alternative media and gave visibility to small news sites.

This law is a victory for the big News Editors that are controlled by
Government and economic powers in Spain

------
santialbo
It was really funny when they published an article in El Pais comparing news
aggregators with piracy and you could see the social sharing buttons next to
it including those news aggregators they hated so much.

Like we say here, _con dos cojones_.

------
sebicas
I am wondering if they will also remove newspapers from search results.
Indexed search results of newspapers may also contain "News snippets"

~~~
gasull
According to this article (in Spanish) they are not. The law only affects news
aggregators:

[http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2014/12/10/actualidad/14...](http://politica.elpais.com/politica/2014/12/10/actualidad/1418244333_431153.html)

------
gasull
Even worse, this might affect Facebook, Twitter and Spanish Reddit-like site
Menéame (very popular there):

[http://boingboing.net/2014/07/28/spain-pushes-for-google-
tax...](http://boingboing.net/2014/07/28/spain-pushes-for-google-tax.html)

Just like we have the term 'patent troll', maybe we need the term 'tax troll'
for some Governments.

~~~
Maken
It's not even a tax, all the money will be collected by publishers' lobby
groups.

~~~
gasull
It is a tax because it is imposed by the Government. It doesn't benefit people
but some lobbies. That is true with all taxes to some extent, since a good
amount of the money collected goes to subsidies or bailouts.

------
tomelders
I do think this is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Why couldn't
google exclude Spanish news sources from google News?

If I were running Google (which obviously I'm not, and probably for good
reason as what I'm about to say might indicate), I would use the companies
enormous amount of capital to exclude all major Spanish news outlets and pay
the the independent and fringe new outlets what the law demands as an F.U. to
the AEDE. But that's just me.

I understand that politics isn't Google's business, but Google (and the
Internet) is fast becoming every Politician's business; And I mean "business"
as in a way for them to make money for themselves. So like it or not, Google
is going to get embroiled in politics. It would be prudent to nip this sort of
stuff in the bud, and make a lot of noise while they're doing it.

------
anon4
So how is what google news is doing not piracy? I mean, we also have Peter
Sunde's post about his ideals on the front page
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8734204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8734204)
and a large portion of comments seem to be very pro-copyright. How come then,
that nobody here is applauding this move? Google news is absolutely breaking
copyright - they're publishing others' content without their permission and
without paying them. Under any measure what they do is illegal. Why then, is
everyone siding with Google news on this? This legislation simply extends
compulsory licensing to news publications.

~~~
hrayr
Mainly because your comment: "...they're publishing others' content without
their permission and without paying them." is false. The publications can
choose to add or remove themselves from google news, meaning google has
permission. Also because google news points to the publications and does not
re-publish in whole.

------
blas01blas
I feel embarrassed of my government, they are so ridiculous, they fell so big
headed that it is very good that google does these things to show them how
foolish they are

------
logicalman
Can they allow users in Spain to access Google News from a non-Spanish TLD but
still serve those results in the Spanish language?

~~~
Raticide
Maybe, but no spanish news sites will be included in the news results, so
they'll still be missing a lot of local stuff.

------
taksintik
Horrible policies like this are the reason Spain's unemployment rate is at
25%. Short sighted bull headed.

------
Vladipoteur
This type of laws will not prevent "paper news" to go to bankruptcy.

The only way for a company grow is to innovate, Google News is a tool that
could help.

At the end of the day it is a lose lose situation: > readers > newspapers >
Google

------
amelius
Why is this new law only limited to news, and not to random things put on HTTP
pages in general (which could also be regarded as a news publication)?

------
NicoJuicy
So they'll send a invoice to my Chinese hosting provider? :P

------
Miner_anonym
Ok, but if i live in Spain and i use vpn with German IP, for example, i have
no promblem, isn't it?

~~~
gasull
You do because you won't be able to read any news from Spanish newspapers.
news.google.es will be down, and other Google News sites in Spanish (like the
ones from Latin America) won't link to any media from Spain.

------
abennobashi
Good for Google. Greedy, thieving socialist governments have no place in the
free world. This new Spanish law stinks of "Anti Dog eat Dog" legislation.
Downvote me to hell, but Who is John Galt?

~~~
mcv
I guess People's Party may sound socialist, but they're Spain's conservative
party.

------
caiob
Since when Google makes money by putting ads on their sites?

~~~
caiob
Are we only allowed to say good things about Google in here?

~~~
tempestn
You're not being downvoted for saying bad things about Google; you're being
downvoted because your post doesn't make sense. As other replies mentioned,
everyone knows Google makes most of their money from ads; however, as the
referenced blog post states, there are no ads on Google News.

~~~
caiob
What was the last time you saw a banner in a google site?

~~~
kaoD
Depends on your definition of banner, but the answer would be "the last time I
used Google Search" which is about 2 minutes ago.

------
youssifa
May not necessarily be a popular opinion on here, but I'll state it anyway:

Google may not _directly_ profit from Google News, but they still manage to
extract value from it. We exist in a top-heavy paradigm where giant servers
profiteer off the work of everybody else, capturing a disproportionate
percentage of the total value created.

It's unfortunate but not unexpected that Google's response is this snarky blog
post. But I wish people wouldn't pretend this is somehow a giant government
tipping the scales against "openness".

I see this more as an institution in charge of making sure our collective
greed not getting the better of us trying to distribute wealth to those who
create it proportionate to the value being created.

Is it a futile attempt, likely unaware of its own vision? Sure. I just wish
Silicon Valley would get its head out of the sand and realize that the current
paradigm isn't necessarily sustainable for anyone -- whether you're the one
sitting atop Mt. Server enjoying crazy network effects or the person
contributing value for peanuts (if you're lucky).

~~~
Afforess
I disagree. The simple fact that a business benefits off another's hard work
does not nessecary deprive the worker of their income. Economics is not zero-
sum. Google News drives traffic to news sites that would otherwise be isolated
to local communities. If anything, Google levels the playing field, allowing
any nearby local news to catch as much traffic as the BBC or NYT. So to
complain that Google is profiteering sounds like you want to kill the golden
goose.

If it becomes harder to consume the news, people won't bother. The economic
pie for news sites in Spain is about to shrink drastically.

~~~
youssifa
I didn't mean to make the point "that a business benefits off another's hard
work does not nessecary deprive the worker of their income". Sorry, I guess it
was lost in translation somehow. My point is that Google profits
disproportionately off the work of others relative to the value it creates,
and that its network effects tip the scales towards a more top-heavy, power
law distribution that's not sustainable in the long-term under the guise of
"openness" because, hey, we get everything for free. And that this is
propogated as "free" and "open" when in reality it just represents a shift in
who controls what.

------
gcb0
"we don't make money because we do not advertise on that site" is a huge
fallacy.

This sounds like a bluff because if that gets traction in the US then their
search business will collapse. Imagine $0.01 for every search that shows a
snipet of wikipedia to the wiki foundation?

~~~
calbear81
It's a bit disengenous because although they don't directly make money on the
News portal, it reinforces their market position and keeps users in the Google
ecosystem. Those users in turn run searches that DO display ads.

~~~
gcb0
that is exactly what i implied.

------
notjackma
_" As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the
site) this new approach is simply not sustainable. "_

Rubbish!

Google's Human Resources department doesn't make any money either, yet it
exists, along with other loss-making divisions.

Google as a whole is a very profitable company, and it could easily pay
publishers over the long run. It just doesn't want to.

~~~
iancarroll
Just because you can afford to subsidize something doesn't mean you should. HR
has a purpose inside Google, it has an output (payroll, disputes) fair to the
input ($$$). Google News would take in $$$ and return nothing.

~~~
notjackma
Yet they're already spending money on Google News: programmers, servers,
electricity. So obviously they're getting something out of it, right? There is
a purpose to Google News, whether it's tracking cookies or something else;
they're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.

~~~
adventured
Google has started all sorts of programs and then shut them down because they
didn't turn out as hoped. I don't see why Google News losing money, and, say,
becoming especially non-economical or burdensome to the company and being
shut-down, would be any different.

