This morning the Mountain View company has confirmed something that many of us already feared and that does not bode well for Spanish Internet users, the digital media or the free flow of information: Google News closes, and it will do so on December 16 before the new Intellectual Property Law enters into force in January 2015.
Now we will try to give a more or less approximate idea of why Google have decided to close this service, what is roughly the new law regarding Internet content and something else.
Why exactly does Google News close?
Basically, the closure of Google's news aggregator occurs in the middle of a law granted as a favorable treatment to the editors of the large Spanish newspapers, the so-called AEDE media, whose full list can be consulted here. These posts would charge Google News an amount of money for each of the links in your posts to appear in the news aggregator. In any case, and to better explain what the so-called "AEDE canon" is, an image is worth a thousand words:
Source: Gurusblog
This means that Google News would not be a self-sufficient site and would not be able to sustain itself, since Google News doesn't make money being an ad-free website. Given this situation, Google's decision has been quite obvious and their pulse has not shaken the least.
What does the closure of Google News mean?
Google News was not just any news aggregator. Its operation allowed to have the news filtered according to reader preferences, and for many Internet users it was one of the best ways, if not the best, to be aware of everything that happens in Spain and in the world.
As for the real meaning of the closure, it is not an economic question. It has already been mentioned that Google did not make money from Google News, so it was a matter of reaching an agreement with the AEDE media to try keep the service in a way that is beneficial to both. The traditional media have not wanted to give up an iota, and that is why Google has decided to shelve the matter and not look back.
As for the alternative blogs and information sites that got a large part of their traffic through Google News, from now on they will have to rely on other media to continue attracting readers, mainly on social networks. For the small media it is a tremendous hit, and as always small businesses will be the most affected.
My opinion
Antonio Machado already said that of "Spain of brass band and tambourine." This is nothing but a clear setback in freedom of access to information, one of many others that we Spaniards have suffered in recent years. The new Intellectual Property Law is incoherent and outdated, and it is not at all adapted to a time when there is a large amount of information available in a multitude of formats.
What those in charge of the AEDE media should understand is that with the fall of Google News there will be no mass exodus to kiosks to buy newspapers and digital subscriptions will not go up, just as when pages of links to audiovisual content are closed, movie theaters are not filled or sales of series and movie DVDs increase. No. What those responsible for these media should be clear is that when Google News disappeared your traffic will drop very steeply, something that has already been seen in other countries where the same move was attempted, such as in Germany, where the law that established the collection of a fee from Google has already been repealed.
Business models must totally change. In video games this has already happened, and since there are digital stores such as Steam, Origin, Desura or GOG, the levels of piracy in this sector have dropped. Companies have known how to adapt to the new times, and this could be extrapolated to the digital media -which consider that Google News is information piracy-.
Sometime AEDE media will be forced to back down, or so we sincerely hope. A black era for digital freedom begins in Spain.