[Krasnol]

There was no effect on the consumer who uses google as the law was supposed to be installed August 1st 2013 but the main publishers who lobbied for the law granted google a free license 2 days before the deadline.

As far as I know google is now the only search engine who has this free license.

It's quite funny because those publishers advertised the law with some heavy criticism towards google. The whole thing was some kind of "anti-google-law". In the end they made them stronger as other portals and search engines have not been granted a free license. I always wondered if this whole thing was not intended this way to give them a better standing on google news in the end.

The EU could have learned something here just like the lobby who pushed for it again.

I'd assume the result for those who do not use google to look for news will find smaller "news" sites. Especially those who feed them fake news because every serious news site has their license rights protected by the VG Wort.

A lose - lose for everybody.

[sbx320]

Axel Springer AG (who were the primary lobbyist for the law) actually attempted to use the law against Google in late 2014 for four of their biggest sites. It took two weeks for them to give Google a free license again. They cited a 40% loss of clicks from Google and a 80% loss from Google News as the reason.

[Krasnol]

Ah yes, you're right I remember that. It made some funny headlines.