People are silhouetted as they pose with laptops in front of a screen projected with a Google logo, in this picture illustration taken in Zenica October 29, 2014.
People are silhouetted as they pose with laptops in front of a screen projected with a Google logo, in this picture illustration taken in Zenica October 29, 2014. Reuters/Dado Ruvic

Google is closing down its News service in Spain after a new law requiring the Internet search giant to pay for linked content has been enforced. The new Spanish intellectual property law called the Google Tax will be in effect on January 1.

In October, the Spanish government passed a law on copyright requiring content services like Google News to pay fees to publishers starting on January 1. The copyright law was lobbied by the country’s Asociacion de Editores de Diarios Españoles, or AEDE, group of news publishers, and did not specify the amount involved, but it apparently doesn’t matter since the Internet giant doesn’t profit from the free service, and therefore any amount it has to pay to publisher means loss for Google.

To prevent this from happening, Google announced on Thursday that its news service in Spain will conclude on December 16 following the Spanish government’s passing of the law.

“But sadly, as a result of a new Spanish law, we’ll shortly have to close Google News in Spain,” Head of Google News Richard Gingras wrote. He explained the move, saying that the new legislation will require every Spanish publication to charge Google News and other similar services for showing “even the smallest snippet” from the sites, regardless whether the publications want to charge the services or not.

“As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the site) this new approach is simply not sustainable. So it’s with real sadness that on 16 December (before the new law comes into effect in January) we’ll remove Spanish publishers from Google News, and close Google News in Spain.”

Gingras insisted that Google is committed to helping the news industry increase their online readership and, consequently, revenue.

This isn’t the first hurdle the news service experienced in Europe. Germany also passed a similar law, which forced Google to remove news publishers from its service. In October, though, the publishers reached an agreement with Google to display their content for free after the traffic to their Web sites plummeted. This is unlikely to happen in Spain. The Spanish law doesn’t have a similar option for publishers to waive the fee.

Spain’s new copyright law is dubbed the “Google Tax,” but it will also affect any Web site containing links to copyrighted materials. The Web sites will be subjected to fines and closure if they refuse to take down the links.