MADRID (AP) — Google announced Thursday it will close Google News in Spain and block reports from Spanish publishers from more than 70 Google News international editions due to a new Spanish law requiring aggregators to pay to link content — a decision that will reverberate around the globe.
Google News in Spain will shut down on Dec. 16 — several weeks before a new Spanish intellectual property law takes effect Jan. 1 requiring news publishers to be paid.
That means people in Latin America, where Spanish news organizations have sought to boost their audiences, won’t see news from Spain via Google News in Mexico or elsewhere. Also set to disappear are reports in English from Spanish publishers like Madrid’s leading El Pais newspaper.
