Google News Re-Opens in Spain After Eight-Year Shutdown

Alphabet reopened Google News in Spain on Wednesday, eight years after it shut down the service because of a Spanish rule forcing the company and other news aggregators to pay publishers for using snippets of their news.

Madrid last year transposed European Union copyright rules, revamped in 2020, into legislation, allowing media outlets to negotiate directly with the tech giant.

The move prompted an announcement from Google last year that it would re-open Google News in the following year.

“Today, on the global 20th anniversary of Google News, and after an almost eight-year hiatus, Google News is returning to Spain,” Fuencisla Clemares, vice president for Iberia, said in a blogpost.

She said the company also planned to launch Google News Showcase, its vehicle for paying news publishers, as soon as possible in Spain.

Meanwhile, the French antitrust authority said on Tuesday it had accepted a series of commitments made by Alphabet’s Google over a copyright law aimed at remunerating news publishers for the use of content online.

The authority also said a EUR-500-million (roughly Rs. 4,120 crore) fine it had imposed on Google last year was now definitive, as the US online giant had dropped an appeal against it. Google paid the fine last year.

The decisions bring to an end the authority’s investigation against Google, which has accepted to hold talks with news agencies and other publishers to pay for the use of their news.