[the_mitsuhiko]

> Congratulations to the EU commission and the EU parliament on achieving the exact opposite of what they wanted to do despite being told this would happen and despite it actually already happening in Spain and Germany.

I don’t follow: what is happening is exactly what the EU wants. I fail to understand the comment here entirely. Until all countries are executing this law this is exactly what the commission predicted is going to happen.

[ekianjo]

> what is happening is exactly what the EU wants.

No, they wanted Google to pay licensing fees and all for showing snippets. That did not happen.

[elcomet]

No. They wanted google to either pay or stop displaying snippets.

[bko]

They didn't achieve the goals.

> “The negotiations were difficult, but what counts in the end is that we have a fair and balanced result that is fit for a digital Europe,” said European Commission Vice President Andrus Ansip. “The freedoms and rights enjoyed by internet users today will be enhanced, our creators will be better remunerated for their work, and the internet economy will have clearer rules for operating and thriving.” The bill is expected to be formally approved by mid-April, after which European Union governments will have two years to include it in their national laws.

Take the claims one by one:

> The freedoms and rights enjoyed by internet users today will be enhanced

I'm not sure what freedom or right was enhanced. Maybe the rights of publishers not to have their content seen by users? But certainly the freedom and right of a news consumer in France was harmed as they have less access to news in a convenient fashion.

> our creators will be better remunerated for their work

This clearly didn't happen. Maybe people will click more, but Google is said to have performed experiments and found that not showing the text leads to a 45% decline in traffic to the website. Yes, they are likely bias and it might be a ruse, but considering how much internet giants focus on providing the least amount of friction and latency to users, I believe the sentiment is correct.

> and the internet economy will have clearer rules for operating and thriving

This is an odd claim because some smaller internet companies got exemptions and there was some horse trading with gas. Doesn't seem any clearer to assert publisher rights based on a case by case basis

> The deal was made possible after France and Germany proposed a compromise last week, giving smaller internet companies some exemptions from the rules. The compromise coincided with a separate deal in which France agreed to support Germany on a natural-gas pipeline with Russia, according to officials in Brussels and Berlin.

[0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/european-union-agrees-to-new-co...

[raverbashing]

Well, you're absolutely right, but the law did go from a complete shitstorm to something more manageable.

> Maybe the rights of publishers not to have their content seen by users?

Well, it was always their right (as they could use robots.txt) but now Google gives them a more fine grained control over it.

Though to be honest I'm very, very happy they're trowing a fit right now. Yes, please, use the panel and take your content off of Google.

> But certainly the freedom and right of a news consumer in France was harmed as they have less access to news in a convenient fashion.

True. But they can always go to the website of their favourite news org and go from there.

[shkkmo]

> Well, it was always their right (as they could use robots.txt) but now Google gives them a more fine grained control over it.

Does it? I am pretty sure Google already provided on page directives that gives sites full control of image indexing, snippet usage and even snippet length. [0]

The differences is that now all news sites are opted-out by default, a legal agreement is required to opt in, and the force of law ensures compliance.

I don't really see how this actually does ANYTHING to help anyone except lawyers. I guess it makes it harder for small aggregators to get going...but is that really a result we wanted?

[0] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710

[raverbashing]

> Google already provided on page directives that gives sites full control of image indexing, snippet usage and even snippet length

Yeah I heard so also as well (your link might be missing some things though), though now they can do it through an UI?

> The differences is that now all news sites are opted-out by default, a legal agreement is required to opt in, and the force of law ensures compliance.

I don't think a legal agreement is required to get back in, or it might be a simple one. Of course if you let Google show it and forget about the others then you're just encroaching its position (but hey isn't that what everybody said it would happen? tough)

> I guess it makes it harder for small aggregators to get going...but is that really a result we wanted?

Yeah... I'm actually sad Google is not asking for money to show full results for them, it would have been funnier.

[phoe-krk]

No. They wanted Google to either pay or pay.

They never wanted Google to show displaying snippets, as we will shortly see when the French publishers notice the plummeting page views and issue "emergency snippet licenses" to Google in order to save themselves from their own greed.

[eps]

> Plummeting page views

Previous discussion on this had a link to the research paper that actually measured said "plummeting" in case of Spain - the decrease in traffic was well under 20%. Just FYI.

* Edited for clarity.

[Nasrudith]

Growth of 2-3% in anything you are actively work towards is the baseline success expectation as it is stagnant or declining otherwise. That is the equivalent of losing a decade's growth. Losing 20% of your salary would certainly qualify as losing 6 to 10 years of minimal growth expectation. It is twice that of a literal dictionary definition decimation. "Plummeting" is certainly not hyperbole.

[crazygringo]

Even a 10% can rightly be considered a "plummet" in many business contexts.

If a stock drops 10% in a day, that's gigantic. Considering how precarious the profitability of news organizations can be to begin with, a 10% drop that can't be reversed could be the difference between staying in business and folding, depending on how costs are structured.

If your traffic decreases by, say 10%, that's huge -- that's a plummet. (If your traffic decreases by 80%, you don't need adjectives anymore -- you're probably out of business now.)

[phoe-krk]

Could you link and/or clarify a little bit? Did their profits shrink by 20% to 80%, or by 80% to 20%?

[eps]

Their traffic went down by less than 20%.

[al_form2000]

Oh, under one fifth? Peachy.

[chrisseaton]

They wanted Google to pay. ‘Or don’t show the snippets’ was the bluff. Google called the bluff.

[eitland]

I guess publishers would only be happy if Google paid, meaning publishers bluffed EU, but not Google.

I think EU is happy with the outcome.

And the publishers deserve it.

I also think it is fair that the tech giants starts to pay, and maybe we can find a more reasonable model later.

[michaelmrose]

Why should they pay publishers for the privilege of promoting the publishers content? It's not like a snippet is a substitute for the content.

[eitland]

I'm not saying this is a good idea.

I'm saying publishers convinced EU that it was a good idea and now they got what they deserved instead of what they wanted.

It also feels right that Google should pay, but I want them to pay ordinary VAT / sales tax on ad sales instead of this.

[pas]

It many times is a perfectly good substitute.

[gsich]

Everyone expected that.

[michaelmrose]

They only win in this context if people use a different search engine that does pay to show snippets.

If people still use Google to find results but have to go on just title and publication to figure out what link to click which spoiler alert they already mostly do then you have 2 net effects.

Searching for news is slightly more cumbersome and resources that do allow snippets will get slightly more clicks from people who can read both.

Who wins in that context?

[conradfr]

Except if people click the links more instead of reading only the snippets.

[michaelmrose]

This would only be likely if lack of snippets means people click more wrong links but I think prior experiences show people clicking less not more

[conradfr]

Yes entirely plausible, I guess we'll another data for that soon then.

[sacado2]

And google chose option 2, and the French government is pissed off because they expected Google to choose option 1 and give agencies free money.

[JohnStrangeII]

The directive works just fine. From the perspective of the EU commission it's perfectly fine not to scrap any content of other creators and not to make it available for free. It merely states that if you scrap content from other companies, then you have to pay for the content.

The purpose of this regulation is to protect the companies and journalists who actually assemble and write the news against a predatory business model.

[ako]

Google has determined that the best way to bring visitors to the newssites is by showing a few lines of the news item. Apparently google vistors are more likely to click on a link if they see a few lines of text.

This benefits the newssite, not google.

Those few lines function as an advertisement for the actual article. Usually companies have to pay for advertisements...

[shkkmo]

> This benefits the newssite, not google.

Since Google makes money off of most online ad sales, it often directly benefits Google as well.

[PyroLagus]

If the news site uses AdSense, which quite a few do, then yes. But I'm not sure if Google's extra profit is that significant. Especially when compared to the benefits the news sites get.

[shkkmo]

While Google does have Facebook as a real competitor, that competition is not on the ad networks side. Google controls the vast majority of ad networks sales (i.e. ads placed on publisher's sites)

Google makes a significant portion of the value for each ad.

> For displaying ads with AdSense for content, publishers receive 68% of the revenue recognized by Google in connection with the service. For AdSense for search, publishers receive 51% of the revenue recognized by Google. [ 0]

[0] https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en

[jhall1468]

If that was their purpose, then they failed miserably. At least they'll find that out soon enough, as page views to those news sites are almost certainly going to plummet. And when they do it will be even more clear that Googles "predatory business model" was helping get these journalists and companies views.

[JohnStrangeII]

Protection by enforcing applicable copyright law, not in the sense of "helping someone out".

The news companies can opt to give away their content to Google for free. The directive merely gave these companies more choice, by stopping illegal web scraping without asking first.

[jhall1468]

They already had the ability to opt-out of Google scraping their articles. They already had a choice, just like they did in Germany. And the German news organizations realized views plummeted after they did this (https://searchengineland.com/german-publisher-group-sues-goo...).

This was never about choice, which they've always had, this has always been about both having their cake and eating it to. When French publishers inevitably see their traffic plummet, they will almost certainly sue Google for it.

[JohnStrangeII]

I totally understand your position.

The point is that it is always opt-in, though. There is no such thing as "use it as you like unless the copyright holder opts-out" anywhere in copyright law. You cannot just e.g. use substantial portions of someone else's texts in your own publications[1], sample a part of someone else's music for your own song, use someone else's graphics as your own, use an unlicensed font, etc., without a written permission by the copyright holder.

The EU directive merely ensures that existing laws are enforced instead of being systematically violated by large corporations.

Independently, of course, you could ask whether copyright law should be that way. I personally don't think so, and think it should be changed in various ways that strongly disfavor large corporations, but that's a completely different discussion. What I try to explain here is the rationale of the EU commission, which primarily thinks in legal terms, not my personal views about that matter.

If you ask for my personal views, I do find it appalling that large companies like Google (and Uber, Microsoft, AirBnB, etc.) continue to try to circumvent laws in ways that no small companies could get through with in court, simply because they have the business power and enough lawyers to give it a try.

[1] beyond fair use, which is very limited and does not apply int his case.

[zmix]

If I am the reason for you, to have customers, then you could be a bit more relaxed about the fact, that I show a one- or two liner from your content. Because, that is all a snippet gives.

You want to play a role in the game? Well, then do your bidding...

[Semaphor]

No, not even close. Just like in Spain, where they passed a law forbidding publishers to allow google to show snippets for free.

[raverbashing]

Except in the EU version, enforcing the press publishing rights is optional (optional to the news org)

[amelius]

Is this true?

[sdenton4]

Summary article:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-google-news-effect-spain-r...

"Yet the report points out that 'substitution effect' is very small in comparison to the 'market expansion effect' that aggregators cause. According to the research, aggregation services reduce search times and allow readers to consume more news overall. The NERA analysis finds that in the first few months of 2015 after the introduction of the law, publishers saw traffic fall on average more than six percent, while smaller publications saw it drop by 14 percent drop."

[Oletros]

Yes,and Google shot down Google News.

But Google was not the worst affected, smaller news aggregators like Meneame suffered more because they didn't have the finnancial muscle to pay even if they wanted