Google News to relaunch in Spain soon after Madrid law change allows companies and publishers to decide how to share revenue

Google News will “soon” be making its return to Spain, Alphabet has said, after the country’s government changed legislation that enables third-party outlets to negotiate directly with the internet behemoth and other platforms.

In a blog post published on Wednesday, the tech giant’s country manager for Spain, Fuencisla Clemares, said that “starting early next year, Google News will provide links to useful and relevant news stories.”

She remarked that “over the coming months, we will be working with publishers to reach agreements which cover their rights under the new law.”

Spain adopted an EU copyright law on Tuesday, essentially paving the way for Google News to make its return to the country.

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The bloc’s copyright directive, which must be applied in all member states, requires internet giants such as Google and Facebook to share revenue with publishers.

The law also removes the collective fee and enables companies to make agreements with publishers.

Aside from the return of Google News service, “the new copyright law allows Spanish media outlets â€" big and small â€" to make their own decisions about how their content can be discovered and how they want to make money with that content,” Clemares said.

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Google News closed in Spain in late 2014 after Madrid passed legislation that required Alphabet and other news aggregators to pay a collective licensing fee to republish headlines or story snippets. 

The Spanish government insisted that the new measures were needed because they “recognize the right of publishing companies and news producers to be paid for the use of their content.”

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