Google announced that it will be running a “small, time-limited test” in which the search engine won’t show results from EU-based news publishers in Google News, Search, and Discover. The test will affect 1% of users in a few countries.
One percent of users in Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain won’t find any news on Google.
Why? Google says it wants to assess how search results from EU news publishers impact the search experience for the users and traffic to publishers. However, European publishers consider the power play as a warning.
The tech giant’s relationship with media organizations in Europe has been plagued with tensions regarding copyright and compensation for news content.
The EU has implemented the Copyright Directive and its Article 15, known as the “link tax,” has drawn significant discussion. It mandates fair compensation for news publishers.
Media organizations argue that Google has significant power over how news is distributed and monetized, putting them at a disadvantage. The disputes also include scraping information for AI training without consent or fair compensation.
In March 2024, Google was fined 250 million euros ($271.73 million) in France over online content.
Meanwhile, Google argues that it “drives people to publishers’ websites” and estimates that an average click to a news publisher in a mature market is worth around 7-9 euro cents per click.
“Each month, people click through from Google Search and Google News to publishers’ websites more than 24 billion times around the world,” Google said in a blog post.
Google bases the tests on compliance with the new law.
“Regulators and publishers have asked for additional data about the effect of news content in Search on people’s use of our products.”
The tech giant also paused the test in France “for the time being.”
“We will continue to show results from other websites, including news publishers based outside the EU. We intend to use this test to assess how results from EU news publishers impact the search experience for our users and traffic to publishers,” Google said.
Once the test ends, the tech giant plans to bring news results back to search. The experiment won’t impact the payments to news publishers under the directive.
Google also notes that its advertising technologies help publishers earn money from their content. Under its program in the EU, Google reached agreements with more than 4000 publishers across 20 countries, and the company engages in partnerships, events, and training. The agreements are based on traffic, ad revenues generated on pages, and other criteria.
“We don’t make money from Google News: we don’t run ads on Google News or the news results tabs on Google Search,” Google said. “We've long provided publishers with detailed data on how their content performs on our platforms, including tools to understand traffic patterns, and we hope that this will provide even more useful, objective data.”
According to German tech publication Heise.de, the test resembles a warning. It will reveal how much traffic publishers will lose without Google, and how much users are actually interested in news on Google.
“We appreciate our longstanding partnership with the news industry and will continue to meet our obligations under the European Copyright Directive,” Google’s announcement concludes.
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