Spain is far from the first European country whose newspapers have battled what they perceive as Google’s theft of their content. But a bill currently under consideration there could have impacts beyond the search giant.
According to the proposed law — passed in the lower chamber and pending in the Spanish Senate — Google and other platforms would have to pay a tax for each time it uses “non-significant fragments” of a news story. Julio Alonso is the founder of Weblogs SL, a digital media company in Spain that could stand to lose a lot via this tax.
Of course, news organizations rely on these websites, especially Google News, to drive traffic to their stories, so Google abandoning the country could have major consequences for Spanish news publishers.