Due to a new EU legislation on copyrights, Google News will be making its return to Spain after shutting down the service back in 2014. This is good news for those living in Spain as they will now be able once again to have one place to find news and information about current events and things that are important to them. The comeback is set for early next year and in the coming months, they will be working with big and small local publishers to get their content on Google News Showcase.
Google decided to shut down its News service in Spain back in 2014 due to strict local legislation which required news aggregators like Google to pay a collective fee to local media to have the right to share headlines and excerpts on their platforms. But in 2019, the European Union passed the European Copyright Directive which lets news publishers to require a fee for their content to be linked and excerpted.
The main difference is that companies like Google can directly negotiate with the local publishers instead of a standard blanket fee for all online media outlets. Two years later, Spain has turned this into legislation and so Google has now decided to open the News platform again. Big and small Spanish media outlets can now make the decision how they want their content to be discovered and how they want to monetize that content.
Google is also currently working on bringing the Google News Showcase back to Spain. This is a licensing program that will pay publishers to have their content for story panels across Google News and Discover. They are currently working with local publishers so they will be able to finalize agreements with their rights covered under the new copyright law that took effect in Spain. They have not yet named which publishers they will be including in Google News when it opens in the country by next year.
This is of course a win-win-win situation for Google, local publishers, and end-users. People always benefit from getting access to good sources of local news. If you’re interested in Google’s plans and how they’re working to support Spanish publishers in Spain, check out g.co/ApoyandoMediosEspaña
