Brussels Google wants to pay more than 300 publishers in Germany, France and four other EU countries money for their news. In addition, a tool is to be introduced to make it easier for others to register as well, the US company announced in a blog post on Wednesday.
“So far, we have reached agreements with more than 300 national, local and specialized news publications in Germany, Hungary, France, Austria, the Netherlands and Ireland, and many more discussions are still ongoing,” said Sulina Connal, Google’s director of news and publishing partnerships.
Two thirds of the group are German publishers, including “Spiegel”, Zeit” and “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”. The blog did not say how much the publishers would be paid.
The move follows the adoption of groundbreaking EU copyright legislation three years ago that requires Google and other online platforms to pay musicians, artists, authors, news publishers and journalists to use their works.
Publishers are among the fiercest critics of Google and have long been urging governments to ensure that online platforms pay a fair remuneration for their content. Australia made such payments mandatory last year, while Canada introduced similar legislation last month. In Germany, Google and publishers have been arguing for years about the interpretation of the so-called ancillary copyright law.
The tool provides publishers with an extended news preview agreement. This is to allow Google to show text snippets and thumbnails – snippets and thumbnails – for a license fee.
