Spain : We messed up
The Spanish Newspapers Publishers’ Association (AEDE) is upset because a law they backed actually passed. They never expected Google’s response of just leaving the country instead of working with publishers, Google simply exited the country.
Leading to a steep decline in traffic for Spanish based news websites.
The media lobbying group was pivotal in getting a new intellectual property law introduced in Spain — the very legislation that caused Google to announce on Wednesday that it would be exiting the country.
The Google exit means large amounts of traffic that was coming to those very websites now vanished and Google happily is serving competitors to those news sites in their results. Leaving the Spanish AEDE with no one to negotiate with and no traffic to enjoy.
Perhaps if the Newspapers took an innovative approach of converting that traffic into a revenue source it would not come down to this. However those monolithic organizations have difficulty dealing with the current events on the ground. Their business model is 200 years old and their approach to generating revenue more protective rather than progressive.
We fully expect the next move is to raise taxes and offer protectionist laws to cover the candle stick makers from a new invention called a light bulb.