Google would remove all Spanish media headlines from its services, Communications Manager for Google Spain and Portugal Anais Perez Figueras told Sputnik.

MOSCOW, December 16 (Sputnik) — The new Spanish intellectual property law will equally affect "mainstream media, blogs or journals," Anais Perez Figueras, Communications Manager for Google Spain and Portugal, told Sputnik Tuesday.

"It will affect everyone equally," Perez Figueras said after Google, the world’s dominant search engine, announced that beginning December 16, it will close its Google News service in Spain in response to the country’s new intellectual property laws.

"Starting from December 16, when users want to access news.google.es, they will be redirected to the help center which will explain the cause of the closure of this service and will suggest the users to choose another Google News version," Perez Figueras stated.

She also said that Google would remove all Spanish media headlines from its services.

On December 11, head of Google News Richard Gingras posted on his blog that the company would shut down its Spanish language news aggregating service. Gingras explained that Spain’s new intellectual property law forces Google to pay for any and all Spanish news media use.

Gingras also noted that since Google News does not charge for the service and therefore does not generate revenue, this new law renders Google’s presence in Spanish news aggregation as "simply unsustainable."

Spanish Minister of Education, Culture and Sports Juan Ignacio Wert announced that Google had rushed its decision, and that the amount of compensation to be received by Spanish publishers was not yet calculated. The minister stressed the «sole purpose» of the law was to «protect the media."

The so-called "Google tax" in Spain follows a similar attempt in Germany. Google responded with a requirement that publishers give it consent for having snippets of their work indexed by the news service. A similar law was passed by France, with Google arriving at a consensus with news publishers in the country in January 2013, by paying 60 million euros ($75 million) into a fund to help French media improve its Internet presence. The company also settled a similar case with Belgian publishers in December 2012 by helping them boost revenues online.