Brussels (Belgium) – Belgian newspapers have hit Google with a $77.2 million lawsuit over the company’s news search practices.  The newspapers say Google illegally excerpts content and argues that the text can be seen after the original articles have disappeared off of the newspaper’s website.  A court ruling against Google could endanger its popular Google News service which crawls news services, magazines and blogs for popular stories.

Traditional newspaper websites typically have a complete article for only a short time (often a week or two).  Afterwards, these articles are moved into the archives where users must pay a fee to search and print.  The newspapers claim Google’s excerpting would destroy this source of revenue.

Google’s news service does link back to the original article, so it would appear that these newspapers might be shooting themselves in the foot.  Surely they must be getting a significant traffic boost from Google News readers?  Perhaps they should be paying Google instead of suing them?

Read more … Reuters.

Comments (1)

Show/Hide comment form