for offering up snippets of news articles. Using
anything more than a single word or “very short
extracts” of an article would require payment.
Offering no snippets of the story means Google
can avoid paying fees to publishers, unless it
gets permission to show them for free.
“We don’t pay for links to be included in search
results,” Richard Gingras, Google’s vice president
of news, said on a conference call with reporters.
“Doing so would not only skew the options
we might provide but it would ultimately
undermine the trust users have in how search
and news work on Google.”
The EU copyright directive was aimed at
giving writers and artists more protection
of their creative rights and incomes. News
companies, concerned about maintaining
quality journalism, had pushed for the
reform amid slumping revenue at traditional
media organizations.
But tech companies and digital rights
campaigners criticized it over worries it would
lead to censorship. Google had lobbied strongly
against the directive, saying that removing
previews would lead to a drop in traffic to
publishers’ websites.