Google News will work again in Spain after seven years of inactivity. The service for the web, Android and iOS that shows links to news from different media had stopped working in 2014, at which point the Internet giant decided to close it after the approval of the AEDE canon.
According to the company, Google News will return at the beginning of next year . Those in Mountain View point out that this service will help the public obtain information from “a greater number of sources.” Along these lines they say that “it can be said that it is an essential tool against misinformation”.
The return of Google News is possible thanks to a royal decree that modifies the Intellectual Property Law. The new rule annuls the AEDE canon which was mandatory until now and which established that web pages or news aggregators had to pay a tax for each link added.
Will something change in Google News in Spain?
“The new copyright law will allow Spanish media – large and small – to freely decide how their content can be found on the internet and how they generate income with them,” says Google, which will now be able to negotiate the payment of a fee with each communication medium.
It should be noted that the new regulations guarantee that each medium can choose to continue to be represented by the association of authors and publishers of books, magazines, newspapers and scores (CEDRO). In this case, Google should negotiate with this collective management organization.
Google points out that over the last few years it has tried to support journalism with initiatives such as the News Initiative and have provided tools for them to generate advertising revenue.
“Every year, the editorial partners of our ad network receive billions of dollars directly from us. In Spain, between 2018 and 2020, Google paid more than 130 million dollars to the five main news publishing partners of our ad network” says the company.
Now it only remains to wait until the beginning of next year to see Google News running in Spain again and find out how Google has negotiated with the media.
