Google News ruling an EU plot?

Stan Beer
Thursday, 15 February 2007 09:32

Opinion and Analysis

It was interesting to read John Dvorak's take on the recent successful lawsuit by a relatively insignificant group of newspapers in a Belgian court against Google. Dvorak believes that the ridiculous ruling is part of an EU plot to squeeze Google out of Europe. Well is it?

It's an undeniable fact that Europe seems to be increasingly hostile territory for a number of high profile US technology companies. Prior to the latest Google episode, Microsoft's brushes with the European Commission over Windows software bundling and Apple falling afoul of the Norwegian Government over the iPod and iTunes connection are two prime examples.

Then of course there was the US$17.5 million Agence France Presse lawsuit against Google for using its headlines to link to the site of...Agence France Presse!

So three or four cases against dominant US technology giants doesn't mean there is an EU conspiracy. Or does it?

This latest case does have some pecularities. For instance, one of the key complaints of these obscure predominantly French language newspapers was that Google News enables readers to access cached archived content that the newspapers would otherwise sell. However, it should be obvious to even the simple minded that Google News, as distinct for the wider search engine, does not cache news stories but links directly to sites. Therefore this charge should have been dismissed out of hand.

Then of course there is the fact that unknown Belgian newspapers should have little cause for complaint when a highly trafficked global website draws attention to their stories and shunts readers their way. After all, they're not wire services like AFP.

Finally, this all happened in Belgium, where the EU Government sits in Brussels. Is that at all significant? Or are we non-Europeans just being paranoid?

In any case, Google intends to fight this ridiculous decision because it is an affront to the freedom of the flow of information across the Internet.