[amatriain]

It's been widely discussed

http://www.dw.de/german-publishers-vs-google/a-18030444

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/05/us-google-axel-spr...

In the end german newspapers gave Google permission to use snippets of content without paying any royalties. They needed Google News traffic more than Google needed them.

Which is the reason why spanish lawmakers made a similar law but with a mandatory royalties clause. Spanish newspapers cannot give an exemption to any company, under the law paying royalties for using snippets is mandatory regardless of the content owner wishes. This law is not currently being enforced, but the consequences are dramatic all the same: Google has shut down Google News Spain, and other content aggregators are under threat of being hit with fines at any moment.

And that's why I'm not currently allowing feedbunch.com users to subscribe to RSS feeds from spanish newspaper publishers, until the situation changes. Anti-monopoly legislation is fine, but sometimes it can be a hammer that the big players use to hit each other instead of a tool to help new players get in the market.

[Oletros]

Yes, I know that the law was passed. What I asked for was about the claim about the ultimatum Google offered to publishers

[amatriain]

This is the best link I've found with a quick search

http://the-digital-reader.com/2014/10/22/german-publishers-c...

[Oletros]

But is still the same, this link doesn't talk about Google given any ultimatum to publishers.

[amatriain]

Germany passed a law intending to make Google pay for using news snippets.

Google simply stopped including snippets from german newspapers.

German newspapers reluctantly gave an exemption to Google so that it would publish snippets from their websites again.

What more evidence do you need? Perhaps only a letter written in blood and signed "give us an exemption or else" accompanied with a horse head would convince you about Google's negotiation tactics here?

[Oletros]

> What more evidence do you need?

What evidence? An evidence that it is not a law that forbids putting snippets,.

The ones doping ultimatum were the German government and the publishers

> Perhaps only a letter written in blood and signed "give us an exemption or else" accompanied with a horse head would convince you about Google's negotiation tactics here?

Perhaps not the bend of reality that you're doing

I suppose that you also think that in the Spanish case the one doing an ultimatum is also google.