Google shuts down Google News in Spain: the reasons

Breaking news in the web sector, coming from Spain. The Mountain View giant has officially decided to suspend Google News activities, starting next week.
The resolution was made official via a press release through which we learn that Google News will stop functioning and being accessible in Spain starting December 16, 2014.
The reason for such a decision – it must be said – appears unprecedented in Europe and the West.
The reason lies in the fact that a new law has been passed in Spain according to which publishers will be fully entitled to request payment from Google – as well as any type of content aggregator – for the use of even just headlines, subheadings, or short excerpts.
Genuine royalties, so to speak, to cover copyright.
Google’s management has always opposed resolutions of this nature, explaining first and foremost that the inclusion of its content in the Google News feed circuit is by no means mandatory. As it is a service offered to publishers, it is they themselves who must request inclusion in the news aggregated by the Mountain View giant, therefore the procedure is not automatic at all, nor is it initiated by Google.
Secondly, it is pointed out that Google News is a product entirely devoid of advertising (unlike Google as a search engine) therefore there is no exploitation for strictly commercial reasons.
On this last point, there would be something to discuss, in the sense that while it is true that Google News does not rely on advertising, it is equally true that – when using Google’s search service – among the very first results returned, there is often a clear space derived precisely from headlines and excerpts taken from Google News.
The decision of the Spanish parliament therefore displeases Google, which has decided to completely suspend the service.

However, there are also contrary voices from small and medium-sized publishers: for them, in fact, Google News often represents a strong source of incoming traffic. Exclusion from such a circuit, so widely used by everyone and so free and automated, will most likely lead to the disappearance of many sites of modest size in terms of generated traffic.
Certainly, a particularly thorny issue arises for everyone, given that Spain is not the only country that has decided to take this path.
In Germany, England, and France, there is also discussion about possible “Google Taxes” and levies to be applied to online activities.
The Spanish case seems to be just the prelude to a probable new era for the online world.