Spanish Publishers Win Big Against Google. The Hangover Starts Immediately

Google News has done it — again: Abandoned a European country where the powers that be think it is doing evil by using snippets from local publications to drive traffic to those publications from the pages of Google News.

Hey Spain: Check in with Germany, where this did not end well. After two weeks without Google Love, Axel Springer, the nation's biggest publisher and one of Google's loudest critics in Europe, cried "onkle." The publisher also played the victim card, characterizing Google's acquiesce to exactly what it had demanded — not publishing content to which it had not secured the rights — as vindictive.

“As sad as it is, at least now we know precisely how enormous the consequences of discriminating are, how Google’s market power really plays out, and how Google punishes those who exercise the right” to protect content, said Springer Chief Executive Mathias Doepfner.

The face-off in Spain is similar: A new tax requires aggregators to pay publishers. Google isn't interested, and since it doesn't put ads against Google News it isn't inclined to operate at even a greater loss than subsidizing free.

Be careful what you wish for, Spain. It would be a shame if you had to embarrass yourself as much as Springer's chief executive.

Anyone with a passing knowledge of Internet news has seen this particular movie a few dozen times. My own favorite version features News Corp, which started back in '09 and is now back in full swing with snappy arguments centering on piracy and hamsters.

Anyway, back to Spain. The new law takes effect in the new year but Google made good on its resolution to bow out early. Publishers who backed the law now want the government to "get involved" again to do … who knows what. Legislate that Google News can't leave?

The Spanish law is commonly referred to as the "Google Tax" because the company is — as is the case in virtually every country its news service operates — the biggest game in town. But it affects all aggregators, who are understandably confused. “We’re completely lost and in a state of judicial insecurity,” Ricardo Galli, co-founder of Menéame, a Spanish news aggregator, told Playground magazine.

That's only the beginning. Because we now also have to define, legally, what an aggregator isn't. Per the Guardian:

The ministry of culture has repeatedly said social networks and their users would be exempt from paying the fee. But Galli said he did not know if that meant sites like his would be spared, as its aggregation is driven by users.

“There’s been a lot of alarm about us disappearing and we’ve received a lot of help and proposals to set up Menéame in other countries,” Galli said. “There’s a risk, but the probability of us disappearing is minimal.”

Remember that old saw about the power to tax being the power to destroy? That was supposed to be irony. But Spain and Germany are taking this advice quite literally. Since there is zero chance that Google will pay any publishers anything for providing them with a massive free marketing tool, it's hard to believe that any politician actually thinks passing a Google tax will raise any revenue. Meanwhile, Google has packed its bags and is moving on with a shrugs but local media will still have to deal with the mess.

This isn't even a clever wedge issue — you know, the kind that broadcasters use to extract bigger retransmission fees from cable/sat companies in the belief that they won't get blamed if the channel goes black in a million living rooms. When readers can't find aggregated headlines they'll take it out on the publishers, and in the meantime the injured parties are — the publishers. And if Spain comes to its senses it will be ... the publishers, just as in Germany, who grovel for Google come back.

One of these days Google just might think it should charge publishers for the right to appear on Google News, citing the ill-considered dramatics in these two European countries. This wouldn’t be unprecedented: publishers pay today to get prime placement in real life newsstands.

So this is a plea to publishers and readers — especially in Spain — to suggest an alternative scenario to the one I outline above, which amounts to cutting off your nose to spite your face and then blaming the person who sold you the knife.

Seriously — what am I missing? Leave a taste in the comments below or go off in a blog post of your own (be sure to link back here, and I'll reciprocate).