September 25, 2006 | Monday

Google v Belgium

By Jackie Danicki - Blogger  in News |Search Engines |Google

So much for the clean, uncluttered look of the Google homepage; check out the search engine’s Belgian homepage for a jarring sight. Here’s what’s happened:

In the ongoing case where a bunch of newspaper publishers are trying to force Google to pay them to index them and send them traffic (a move that has search engine optimizers worldwide wondering what they could possibly be thinking), Google appealed both parts of the ruling. The bigger issue (the indexing and showing links to Belgian certain news sources) will be heard on appeal in November. However, on the issue of forcing Google to place the entire text of the legal order on the front of both google.be and news.google.be, the Belgian courts have turned down Google’s appeal, and said they will start fining the company if it does not place the entire text (with no commentary, either) on both websites.

Hence the crowded, ugly text all over Google.be.

You know, the French regard the Belgians as irredeemably stupid, and this battle isn’t going to help fight the stereotype. The entire case is utterly ridiculous, and it seems that neither the plaintiffs nor the Belgian courts have much of a clue about how the internet actually works. It will probably hurt Belgian business, as any search engine will no doubt wonder whether it’s worth the hassle of entering the market there. More to the point, the case is just downright petty.

This isn’t about protecting content. It’s about being jealous that Google has built a successful business making their content more valuable—and they feel that the increased traffic and increased ad revenue isn’t enough of a payment. It still takes quite a misunderstanding of the internet to complain when someone gives you traffic that they’re not paying you enough for it. It wouldn’t be unfair to then suggest that Google stop sending them traffic altogether. These publishers seem to assume they’re in the power seat here, and that it’s their content that makes Google valuable. That’s not the case. The value in Google is its ability to make that content easier to search and find. If the publishers want to go back to the days when it was harder to find their content, that’s their problem—but it seems quite likely they’ll regret it if that comes to pass.

Add your opinion

Name: Email: (will be encrypted, to protect against email harvesters) Location: URL:
Save your details in a cookie

Notification of follow-up comments

Enter the security code