[simias]

In order to display ads Google needs users to use its websites. Google being able to offer news snippets on his website is a feature that drives traffic and therefore drives ad impressions and therefore revenue.

It's like saying that Google doesn't benefit from GMail because people reading mail doesn't make them money.

I guess an other way to answer this question would be to say: if Google doesn't care at al about previews, why did they develop the feature in the first place and then fought against these laws instead of just removing it as soon as people started complaining? Clearly they do deem them valuable enough to go through this whole charade.

[AnonymousPlanet]

Those impressions are not from the search site but come into play once people click on a link. Google has an incentive to have people click on links. Including news sites. Especially news sites that come with tons of ads.

Let's say I blog about topics a lot of other people blog about. Let's say there was a Google Blogs. I would want Google to post a relevant snippet of my blog post to help me stand out from all the other links. And Google would happily comply, because this makes those who bought ads that now get displayed on my blog happy, and Google can charge them more money.

I'd say I would have to have a very twisted and self absorbed mindset to believe that Google is stealing from me for posting a relevant excerpt from my blog. But maybe that's just me.

[kd5bjo]

> Google has an incentive to have people click on links.

This is true only insofar as it incentivizes people to come to Google in the first place. If Google can directly provide the information that the user is looking for, then it gains no benefit from sending the user elsewhere instead.

[AnonymousPlanet]

Again: Google's revenue comes from ads. Those ads are not on their search site. They are on the sites people click. How can you still believe, Google has no benefit from sending people to those sites?!

Second, in most cases those previews are too small to provide the information the user was looking for.

Your argument is based on false assumptions.