Google said Wednesday it will tweak how it
shows previews for news stories in France
but won’t pay license fees to publishers when
the country brings in new European Union
copyright rules.
The U.S. tech giant will stop showing a snippet
— a few lines of text — and a small thumbnail
photo for articles by European publishers
seen in France, as it currently does for some
news results.
The change will take effect in late October,
when France becomes the first EU country to
adopt the bloc’s directive, aimed at modernizing
copyright rules, into national law.
One of the EU directive’s more controversial
parts was a requirement that search engines pay