Google Settles Part Of Belgian Lawsuit -- Many Questions Left Unanswered

from the keeping-quiet dept

On Friday, Google was back in court fighting the ridiculous ruling written by a judge that confused Google and Google News (repeatedly referring to Google's cache as if it were a part of Google News, when it is not) which banned Google from linking to French and German language Belgian newspaper websites. Following all the publicity from the case, some others, such as Belgian photographers jumped on the bandwagon asking Google not to send them traffic. However, over the weekend, the news broke that Google has settled with two of the five groups that were suing it -- but the details are left out. That has many people speculating over whether or not Google paid up. Alternatively, it's possible that someone from Google sat these people down, explained to them how the internet works, and why it's a damn good thing when the world's most popular search engine is driving lots of traffic your way (or perhaps, they just pointed out how damaging it is for Google to stop linking to them). However, if it does later come out that Google somehow paid up to settle this dispute, it will open them up to tremendous problems, as publishers of all types will suddenly start demanding their cut as well. The folks at Google know all of this, so it would be quite a surprise if they did pay up.

11 Comments | Leave a Comment..


If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...
 

Reader Comments (rss)

(Flattened / Threaded)

  1.  

    Should they not be clear about this then?

    identicon
    Paulo, Nov 27th, 2006 @ 2:45am

    Then, why don't they just go public will all this. As far as I can see, if it remains secret, then they payed up.
    I'm next in line, thank you!

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    As me, Google should have just delisted Belgium...

    identicon
    Panaqqa, Nov 27th, 2006 @ 4:14am

    After all, who's going to miss it if Belgium just suddenly vanishes from all Google search results (except maybe some Belgians)? Then shut down google.be, close all gmail accounts that used a Belgian email address for signup, and block IPs from Belgian from google.com.

    Bingo. Effective removal of one troublesome small country from all future interferences with Google's business.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  
    identicon
    ScaredOfTheMan, Nov 27th, 2006 @ 5:13am

    Booooo on google....Instead of drawing a line in the sand and saying "no, money for you" it *may* have simply paid up.

    The scary part to me, is the trend, maybe its in google's best interest to pay them. That way no search start up will ever have a proper index of sites as they will have to pay for some of them.

    They should have held the line and pulled everything from the index and watched them suffer.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  
    identicon
    Prometheum, Nov 27th, 2006 @ 5:42am

    Its alot more profitable for google to pay off some people and retain a hold in even one more country then pull that and piss off most of europe. If they had pulled, it would've looked like angry americans getting pissed that they can't do what belgium apparently thinks is illegitimate and disadvantaging the people of belgium instead of just fixing their problem. You have to admit, if google paid them off, everyone wins.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  5.  

    Why?

    identicon
    mousepaw, Nov 27th, 2006 @ 5:53am

    Okay, what have I missed? Do we know WHY these guys want off Google? Why talk about a cure when the disease hasn't been established?

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  6.  

    Stupid motto

    identicon
    Matthew, Nov 27th, 2006 @ 5:59am

    "Do no evil" should be altered slightly to

    "Do no evil, and suffer no fool"

    sarcasm
    These people eat waffles as dessert and clearly cannot be trusted with the Internet.
    /sarcasm

    Seems to me that Google is doing all the work to make the Internet more useful and adding content and everyone can only think in get-paid-now terms. Perhaps that's understandable, but Google is building a better road to your site so shouldn't you be building a better site?

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  7.  

    robots.txt

    identicon
    Starky, Nov 27th, 2006 @ 7:38am

    Why don't they just use robots.txt to tell the engine not to search their site? Wouldn't that be a lot easier and cheaper than a lawsuit? Or would that not work with Google News for some reason?

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  8.  

    now this is true capitalism

    identicon
    itanshi, Nov 27th, 2006 @ 8:02am

    and this is why people want to be communists. profit now, not later. kill the goose for a couple eggs now and never get them again later. Dude, people, plan your retirement, not your vacation.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  9.  

    Re: As me, Google should have just delisted Belgiu

    identicon
    Beans for Breakfast, Nov 27th, 2006 @ 11:57am

    Yes, but they do have good beer there, so the country's not a total waste.

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  10.  

    Re: robots.txt

    identicon
    Beans for Breakfast, Nov 27th, 2006 @ 12:02pm

    Of course, but they are clearly so ingnorant of how this fancy web thing works that they would never understand. "Robot? We don't have any robots."

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  11.  

    Belgian SCAM. Seriously.

    identicon
    hanzie, Nov 28th, 2006 @ 9:23am

    I know this story didn't need more ridicule, but one of the two societies that settled with Google is the Société Civile des Auteurs Multimedia, abbreviated SCAM. As a Belgian, I wish to God I was making this up.

    Yes, ICT industry execs, invest in Belgium, where you'll find your trusty collective copyright management contact at www.scam.be

    reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


Add Your Comment

Have a Techdirt Account? Sign in now. Want one? Register here
Get Techdirt’s Daily Email
Save me a cookie
  • Note: A CRLF will be replaced by a break tag (<br>), all other allowable HTML will remain intact
  • Allowed HTML Tags: <b> <i> <a> <em> <br> <strong> <blockquote> <hr> <tt>


A word from our Sponsors...
Follow Techdirt
Flattr rss rss
From the Techdirt Archive...
A word from our Sponsors...

Close

Email This