Google threatens to ban French newspapers if law is passed forcing them to PAY publishers for linking to content

Disagreement over so-called 'Google tax' which would force the search giant to pay to use newspaper content

Similar law has been proposed in Germany

Google has threatened to ban French newspapers from its search engine if the country passes a law to make search engines pay for the right to use news articles online.



The new law, dubbed the 'Google law,' has been spearheaded by French newspapers, and mirrors a similar law under consideration in Germany.



The owners of many French newspapers are in favor of the tax, believing their revenue and copyrights are compromised when Google's search results display their content.



Google has threatened to remove French newspapers from its search engine if a new tax which would force them to pay to use content comes into force.

WHAT IS GOOGLE NEWS ?

Google News is a the search giant's computer-generated news site. It aggregates headlines from news sources worldwide, groups similar stories together and displays them according to each reader's personalized interests. Google says stories on the system are 'selected and ranked by computers that evaluate, among other things, how often and on what sites a story appears online.'

France's minister for high technology, Fleur Pellerin told France's Le Figaro newspaper that the government is studying the idea and that 'Europe will be stronger if it can move ahead unified on that idea.'



She was in Berlin last week to speak with her counterpart about the proposals, a spokesman said.



French Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti also recently told a parliamentary commission it is 'a tool that it seems important to me to develop.'



However, Google says that such a law would 'threaten its very existence,' according to a letter it sent to several French officials and published online today.



'There has been some interest around an extract from a note we have prepared about a proposal by French news publishers associations to require search engines to license all of the content that they help users to find across the web,' said Olivier Esper, Google's Director of Public Policy in France.



'The web has led to an explosion of content creation, by both professional and citizen journalists.



'So it's not a secret that we think a law like the one proposed in France and Germany would be very damaging to the internet.



'We have said so publicly for three years.'

Google said the move was 'detrimental to French users, innovation on the Internet and ultimately to the news publishers themselves.'



However, the search giant said: 'We have always been and remain committed to collaborate with French Publishers associations as they experiment and develop sustainable economic models on the Internet.'



Google's representatives met in Paris with Fleur Pellerin, the French Minister for small business, innovation and numeric economy, according to Arnaud Guillois, a spokesman for the French embassy in Washington.



Google is also part of a lobbying group in Germany that opposes the proposed law there, as well, though the company hasn't sent a similar position paper to the German government, a Google spokesman said.