Fresh on the heels of Shailesh Prakash resigning as vice president of Google News, the tech giant is testing the removal of EU news publishers from its search results.
Google says the test is time-limited and will remove EU news publications from Google News, Discovery, and Search in nine EU countries to help “assess how results from EU news publishers impact the search experience for our users and traffic to publishers.”
Small, time-limited test
Google said it’s conducting the test to comply with Article 15 of the European Copyright Directive (EUCD), where it has agreements with over 4000 publications in twenty EU countries, and because Publishers and EU regulators have “asked for additional data about the effect of news content in Search.”
The company said it is a “small, time-limited test” that will remove EU news publications from one percent of users in France, Denmark, Italy, Poland, Belgium, Greece, Croatia, Spain, and the Netherlands.
Users in those countries will continue to see non-EU news articles and results from other websites, and EU news publishers’ content will return once it concludes the test.
Google test announcement on its blog, The Keyword:
Google’s problems with publishers
Google has been threatening to remove its services from numerous countries if regulations meant it must pay publishers for their content for several years now, and this “small, time-limited test” could be Google firing a warning shot across the bow of EU news publishers’ desks with the message, let’s see how you get on without me!
The EU has already made Google comply with its European Copyright Directive, resulting in the tech giant having to license content from thousands of EU publishers.
Earlier this year, Google responded to California’s implementation of the Journalism Preservation Act, which requires Google to compensate local publishers for linking to their websites by removing the links, and then agreed with the state to fund California news outlets.
In France, Google had to pay $272 million after it lost its case against the country for violating a past agreement to compensate news publishers.
In Canada, Google vowed to remove links to Canadian news outlets because of the incoming Online News Act but then reached a deal to avert the link blockade.
In 2021, Google almost pulled its search engine out of Australia entirely because of a proposed law requiring it to share royalties with linked news publishers. After Australia implemented the bill, Google struck a deal to license content with Australian News companies.
Google, you’ll miss me when I’m gone
Although Google frames its “small, time-limited test” as a data-gathering experiment that will help publishers “understand traffic patterns,” it could be seen as a warning to show EU publishers (and others) how much traffic they’d lose without Google. What’s for sure is when the test ends, EU media news outlets will know precisely how much they need Google or not.
