Publishers worldwide have been complaining about Google News since its launch, arguing that story excerpts appearing in search are a way for Google to capitalize on others' work. Last year, after a legal battle, Google News essentially became opt-in for German publishers: if they didn't like the way Google News was doing business, they could leave. Many large publishers in Germany didn't take Google up on the offer until two weeks ago, when about 200 publishers opted out. Axel Springer, the country's largest news publisher, is now walking back that decision.

Google News traffic fell 80 percent

Rather than risk paying licensing fees for using snippets of Axel Springer's stories, Google removed everything except the headlines from their results. After that, Axel Springer's web traffic fell off a cliff: visitors from web search fell 40 percent; from Google News, they fell 80 percent. The company's chief executive said they would have "shot ourselves out of the market" if they'd continued with the policy, according to Reuters. This isn't a tiny company fighting a monolithic corporation, either: Axel Springer publishes Europe's top-selling daily paper, Bild.

The German law is part of a wider push to reign in Google across the EU. There was a similar stand-off in France last year, which ended with Google shelling out about $82 million USD for a "Digital Publishing Innovation Fund." As recently as last week, a similar law was passed in Spain. But if the result in Germany is any indication, news publishers may be too hooked on Google News to quit.