Under new publishing rules the EU is consider “Google may eventually have to pay newspaper and magazine groups whenever links to their content are shown on Google’s European aggregation sites.” The New York Times August 29, 2015 story “European Publishers Play Lobbying Role Against Google” include this comment from Christoph Keese, executive vice president at Axel Springer and a vocal critic of Google:

This is not about protecting the legacy business,…It is about ensuring there is a level playing field and making sure that international companies respect European laws.

The New York Times said that:

Google has fought hard against the lobbying and investigations. The company tripled its spending on lobbying in Brussels last year, spending at least $4.8 million in 2014, according to its European disclosure report.

Eric Schmidt, the company’s executive chairman, met with Margrethe Vestager, Europe’s top antitrust official, before her decision this year to bring formal antitrust charges.

Other company officials have held meetings with national politicians to outline how Google can bolster countries’ often flagging economies, according to several government officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Assuming the rules go into effect it will be interesting to their impact on Google’s 90% search engine control in the EU.

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