Spanish legislation has been transposed to the European copyright directive
After a hiatus of almost eight years, Google News (Google News) is already operational in Spain after the European copyright directive was transposed into Spanish law by royal decree at the end of last year. This is how this tool returns, which can be consulted from the site news.google.es or through an application.
As of today, and on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Google News, this service is once again available to Spanish readers at news.google.es on desktop or mobile, or through an application for Android and IOS, as reported this Wednesday Google sources to EFE, which have clarified that these mobile applications will still take “a few days” to appear.
“Today, on the twentieth global anniversary of Google News, and after a break of almost eight years, Google News returns to Spain. This is thanks to updated copyright law that allows Spanish media, large and small, to make their own decisions about how their content can be discovered and how they want to monetize it,” said Fuencisla Clemares, general director of Google in Spain and Portugal.
Clemares refers to a return that has been possible thanks to the adaptation that Spain made to its legislation of the Spanish regulations through a royal decree already in force since November 2021, but that still has to go through Parliament, where it is possible the possibility of its articles being modified. With the intention that Google News Spain “help more people” to find more news, from more places, and “help editors find new readers”, they have added from the search engine, the news that readers will access come from from both “big media websites and smaller, local, specialist publications.” “Making it easier for readers to find the news they’re looking for not only benefits readers, but also helps publishers. Google News directs readers to publishers’ websites, which helps drive traffic to their content, where they can display ads and encourage readers to subscribe,” said the CEO.
As he also added, news consumption in Spain has fallen since Google News was closed in 2014, and this led to a 10% reduction in traffic to the websites of Spanish publishers, with the “greatest impact on publishers more little ones”.
How does it work
Some of the highlights of this return is the division into several sections such as ‘Top News’, a section that begins with the ‘Reader’s Summary’, with the aim of bringing you up to date with the most important news since your last visit. . It also has a ‘Local News’ section, where readers can follow the news of various cities in their country directly from the “News Summary”. In addition, although it is not yet underway, the reader will have the ‘data verification’ service, with the aim of “helping the public distinguish between fact and fiction.”
Among other novelties, Google News proposes another section to create a section with the topics that each user chooses and thus personalize the experience. These news can be grouped into sections of interest, such as ‘World News’, ‘Business’, ‘Entertainment’ or ‘Sports’.
What about news generators?
In this sense, according to Google Spain, all publishers that comply with its news content policies will be able to appear in Google News and in other news aggregators. “Publishers do not need to submit their website to us to appear in the aggregator. Our systems automatically identify new high-quality information websites, and we are constantly working to introduce improvements,” Clemares added.
Thus, in addition to bringing Google News back to Spain, it will “work” with the Spanish media to reach agreements and launch Google News Showcase, a program of licensed products, which provides a new experience and ” pays publishers to create curated content for Google News and Discover story boards.” In this way, they have nuanced from the technological giant, both readers and generators of information benefit from Google News. “We trust that the return of Google News to Spain will help many more people find the news they are looking for, from diverse and reliable sources of all sizes, inside and outside Spain, and provide even more support for journalists and editors who work tirelessly to tell us the latest news”, concluded Clemares.