The company shared how the latest test is just a part of its limited time trials and therefore would only impact a small figure of users coming from nine EU nations and will assist how results are assessed from news publishers based in this part of the world.
To be more specific, it will display how that impacts search experience and traffic on Google to all publishers. However, after seeing the current fragile state of the press and media these days, not to mention the firm’s notorious history of pulling services with the fear of news-based laws, it wants to view other options where it’s in charge as the mob boss.
The search giant described the trial as a very limited-time experiment to remove EU results from its search, News, and also from the users’ customized Discover feed. This means the new trial will only impact 1% of the overall usage base in places like Belgium, Denmark, France, Croatia, Italy, Poland, Spain, Netherlands, and Greece. These citizens would still see all the results from different pages such as those arising from news publications elsewhere.
The firm added how news results will pop up as usual after tests end but no timeline was provided in this context. For now, the search engine giant explained how such trials will not impact publisher payments that come under the EUCD which include deals with more than 4000 different publishers in the EU.
Google confirmed how it does share the history of making use of its potential power of removing visibility as a negotiating stick in such scenarios. In other cases, this tactic has assisted in drawing concessions.
In the past, Google threatened to pull news links from places like Canada in reply to bills such as the Online News Act of 2023. This forced all tech companies to come out with compensation related to linked content with any online news publisher. Despite months full of negotiations, the Android maker confirmed how Canada did address its issues and paved a new path to exemption.
Google agreed to pay $100M each year to Canadian news organizations in a new deal that was signed in October of this year. Previously, Google spoke about briefly getting rid of links belonging to Californian news agencies in reply to the CJPA. This would force Google to pay news publishers in return for using links to their pages. For now, the bill is yet to be confirmed but Google managed to strike a deal with lawmakers on this front in July. This deal would commit tens of millions to fund and support local media.
Google made threats to remove the whole search engine from Australia in the year 2021. This was its stern reply against a law that forced tech firms to share royalties with different media outlets. But the country’s prime minister did not budge and in the end, Google managed to strike deals with media firms for licensing content.
Image: DIW-Aigen
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