Nieman Foundation at Harvard
Earlier this year, Google created a new policy that asked German media companies to opt-in to be included in Google News. That followed a change in German law that allows publishers to charge search engines like Google that reproduce snippets of their articles online.
Now, in a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too move, a number of German news sites like Zeit Online, Spiegel Online, and Axel Springer papers, are opting-in:
Axel Springer AG — publisher of the mass-circulation tabloid Bild and national daily Die Welt — said the decision to opt into Google News was a temporary measure while the company lays the legal and technical groundwork to charge aggregators for their use of its material.
