Who is the Big Loser in the Google-Belgium Copyright Case? [The Next Net]
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scooped by Basil
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Summary: Google (GOOG) lost a copyright-infringement case in Belgium. Newspapers there objected to stories from their Websites being included in Google's search index, as well as headlines, photos and snippets appearing on Google News. Google... Click to expand...
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Google (GOOG) lost a copyright-infringement case in Belgium. Newspapers there objected to stories from their Websites being included in Google's search index, as well as headlines, photos and snippets appearing on Google News. Google plans to appeal, but for now will remove the offending links from its search results. (Danny Sullivan has all the sordid details).If the ruling is upheld, it will be the Belgian newspapers who are the big losers. Not showing up on Google or other search engines makes you pretty much invisible on the Web (at least to new readers who wouldn't seek your site out by themselves). Google may be profiting from search ads next to results with links to these newspapers' stories. But the Belgian newspaper sites no doubt also receive a lot of traffic from Google which they would otherwise not get. And when all those visitors click through to the full stories, the Belgian sites can show them their own ads.
But that is not good enough for the Belgian newspapers. They saw all the money Google was making simply by indexing the Web and wanted to grab a piece of it. The Belgian court sided with them, but instead of gorging on their share of the search engine's profits, Google will simply make them disappear. As a result, traffic to their Websites will go down, and so will their online revenues. That's what happens when you let the lawyers run your business.
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