This article is more than 7 years old

This article is more than 7 years old

Newspapers accounting for 90% of Brazil's circulation have abandoned Google News. The organisation that represents 154 of the country's papers say all its members have banned the search engine from using their content.

They argue that Google refused to pay for content and was driving traffic away from their websites.

Some of the Brazil's most important titles, such as O Globo and O Estado de Sao Paulo, are among those that have pulled out from the Google service.

"Staying with Google News was not helping us grow our digital audiences," said the president of Brazil's National Association of Newspapers, Carlos Fernando Lindenberg Neto.

"By providing the first few lines of our stories to internet users, the service reduces the chances that they will look at the entire story in our websites."

But, at a recent meeting of the American Press Association in Sao Paulo, Google's public policy director, Marcel Leonardi, defended its decision not to pay.

He said: "Google News channels a billion clicks to news sites around the world." He compared the ANJ's demands to a restaurant taxing a cab driver for taking tourists to eat there.

Source: Knight Centre