Google News Removes Belgian Newspaper

Found on Slashdot on Sunday, 17 September 2006
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Following a judicial action (link in French) by the 'French-speaking Belgian Association of the press,' Google.be has removed all the French-speaking press sites from its index, as can be seen by doing a search. The court order to Google is posted at Chilling Effects. In summary, the editors want a cut of the profit that Google News makes using their information. No such deal exists for the moment. Google has been ordered to remove all references, or pay one million Euros per day if it doesn't comply. Net effect: they removed all link to the sites, from Google News, but also from Google's search. Will Google become irrelevant in Belgian, and be replaced by MSN? Or will the newspapers, which gain from commercials, and thus net traffic, change their position when they'll see the drop in traffic that it is causing?

I doubt that what that association planned. After all, Google still brings most visitors to your page, so it's not the best idea to cut that off. On a side note: hasn't Google said once that there is no way they can control the database content? This has stopped many webmasters and big companies from asking for a push-up, but court orders showed that this statement was false. Well, court orders and Google's interest in China (which proves how good Google can censor its index).