Belgian newspaper has currently sued the search engine giant for listing an article which included the content on Google News which was an extract of the paper. This had an after effect which led to Google blocking each and every search result which relates to associations of Belgium newspapers.
This brings back memories of Copiepress. Copiepress is an organization which stages the newspapers of German and French languages. Google had been sued by Copiepress and had claimed the same thing which related to a news article publication on Google News. Copiepress further said that Google News was using the articles of the newspaper to increase its own revenue as well as web traffic. Google had sadly lost the battle in May.
Google did not only lose the trial initially but even the appeal which it had made subsequently. It was even said that Google could even have to pay which on a daily basis a sum of €25,000 if there was any default from Google’s end to comply with the decision. This even meant that Google would not bring in to use any news article which is from the related sites.
The following move from Google is highly being considered as a tit-for-tat move which ruled in its favor as it has a monopoly on the search engine world and therefore it made a decision to get all the search results relating to the specified newspapers removed. One can now more or less consider these newspaper to get delinked from the world news. La Capitale,which is along the publications, in an AP report has blamed the search engine giant of the ‘boycott’ act. A similar article come up on La Libre’s latest edition where again they blamed Google and called its act foul. The article stated that Google needs to distinguish the respective services. It continued to state that the editors of the newspaper do not want to be delisted from Google search but they would like to restrict their articles from being posted on Google News.
Google however was rigid on its stand and said that Copiepress could be included once again if they give an indication that they want to get back on Google Search then they would have to waive of the penalties which might come up even in the near future. This was however not made clear as to the comment was actually for Google Search or Google News.
It looks like the Belgian news industry has come to a stand still for the world as its unfortunately been removed for the time being. But it is really difficult for a specific country or two to fight this giant as Google does not rely on its monopoly only but it has a huge support on which its riding its control.