Google has decided to shut down its operations in Spain, and will no longer include any Spanish publishers in Google News. Google’s reasoning behind this is the new Spanish law that requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not.
Google News Shutting Down. I never really thought that it would come to this.
As of the writing of this post, Google News Spain is still up and running. According to Google, they will shut down Google News on December 16th:
So it’s with real sadness that on 16 December (before the new law comes into effect in January) we’ll remove Spanish publishers from Google News, and close Google News in Spain.
So rather than providing a well-used and much-needed service like Google News to Spanish readers and publishers, Google has decided that since it’s not profitable to them they’d rather shut the service down completely. Must everything be profitable for Google in order to keep the service up and running?
Well, apparently so.