This is an interesting one, and I still haven’t quite got my head around the implications.
Google was sued in Belgium by a number of media organisations for hosting their stories on its Google.be news section. Their argument was that Google was making money from their stories so they wanted some of the revenue. Google refused, they demanded Google end all links, Google refused again, they sued and won.
The Google cache “violates in particular the laws on copyright and ancillary rights and the law on databases” the court found. If they didn’t pull all Belgium stories, they would get fined €1 million a day. The court also ordered that Google publish the entire court judgement on Google.be for five days or face a fine of €500,000 a day.
Google refused again and appealed the decision, and lost, so today the judgement has gone up on the front page of Google.be in French and Flemish. You can have a look now, but be quick.
What’s interesting about this is several things:
- Google’s previous sense that it was only linking to stuff and helping people find information has fallen apart as the company has become more grasping, pushing the boundaries further and further back to make money, until people start feeling that it is ripping them off.
- People aren’t prepared to accept the extra traffic they get from Google as a good enough balance for the loss of control they feel over their copyright.
- National rules and legislations are gradually introducing their rules over even Internet search engines, bring a slow end to some Net companies’ supra-legislative approach to business.
It strikes me as immediately odd that people *don’t* want their stuff on Google – to the extent that they will sue them to stop them from doing it. And that’s because Google is no longer a search engine – it is a business trying to make money from the information that it has accumulated, none of which it has actually produced. This issue cuts deep and there are going to be a few more occasions like this.
What is also very interesting is that by my forcing Google to display its Google.be website, it automatically viewed me as a different person and logged me out of the Google Groups page I was in. It won’t let me back in because now it is assuming I am in Belgium and so a different person to the person who was on its Google Groups site, who came from the UK.
We are gradually becoming very carefully closed down to our physical locations on the worldwide Internet, whether we like it or not. I might start up a proxy server business.
neil
September 25, 2006 at 6:56 pmProxy servers are a mug’s game, Kieren! The future lies in tor and privoxy!
Dave
September 26, 2006 at 8:26 amWhen I go to the google.be page I see all the links and radio buttons in Dutch/Flemish, but the judgement only in French. Strange, or are they taking the piss?
Kieren
September 26, 2006 at 9:49 amWell, Google doesn’t necessarily want the judgement up in English because the translation itself is a huge impediment to the monolingual US press – as can be seen from the press coverage.
I’m sure the judgment is also there in Flemish though – you just have to select the right button.
Kieren
Dave
September 26, 2006 at 12:05 pmI never expected it in English, but when it shows me the Flemish/Dutch buttons (logical maybe, seeing how I often use google.nl), it shows me the text of the ruling in French, not Flemish, and no link to a Flemish version.
Then again, this really isn’t important compared to rest of your piece. As you were.
Kieren
September 26, 2006 at 12:18 pmStrange. I definitely saw it in Flemish because I know French and I also recognise that text like “noen glenrich pende”, or whatever, is either Dutch, Flemish or Afrikaans.
Kieren
Skippy
September 26, 2006 at 12:44 pmI’m a bit confused.
The Google cache can be controlled by webmasters quite easily. I don’t like to see my stuff in the Google cache either, and I accomplished it without suing them, and without losing the traffic Google drives towards my site.
As for the Google news service, I believe it links directly to the original websites and only offers short excerpts from the news text.
So why did they get so worked up? Over links and excerpts?
Adam L
September 29, 2006 at 6:57 pmIt seems likely that this will complicate Google’s business model. Also, this decision is likely to have international repercussions which will likely cost Google a good deal of revenue. One question I have is…who is obligated to make the first move in Belgium; meaning, do New Corps. have to assert their right or does Google have to provide them with the option of being linked or not?