INTERNET | Spanish news to vanish from Google News globally

Google announced yesterday it will close Google News in Spain and block reports from Spanish publishers from more than 70 Google News international editions due to a new Spanish law requiring aggregators to pay to link content — a decision that will reverberate around the globe. Google News in Spain will shut down on Dec. 16 — several weeks before a new Spanish intellectual property law takes effect on Jan 1 requiring news publishers to be paid. That means people in Latin America, where Spanish news organizations have sought to boost their audiences, won’t see news from Spain via Google News in Mexico or elsewhere. Also set to disappear are reports in English from Spanish publishers like Madrid’s leading El Pais newspaper. People who use Google’s standard search in Spain and anywhere else around the world will still be able to find articles on their own from Spanish publications, because the law applies only to aggregators and not to individuals who do their own searches outside of Google News. Richard Gingras, head of Google News, said the decision to close Google News in Spain was made “with real sadness.” Spain’s AEDE association, which represents large news publishers, lobbied for the law nicknamed the “Google Tax.” It declined comment yesterday on Google Inc.’s decision, which is the first shutdown since Google News was launched in 2006.