Tag Archives: google

Spanish news publishers beg Google to put news back online

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Google News closed in Spain today because of a new law that would force it to pay publishers for linking to their site, and so Spanish newspapers (who mainly lobbied for the new law) have lost millions of page views a month. Which is why the AEDE (the association of newspaper editors that lobbied for the law in the first place) is now lobbying the government to, ah, force Google to reopen the service. Google Continue reading Spanish news publishers beg Google to put news back online→

The Google News tax, and how it’s failed elsewhere in Europe

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So the Government’s new copyright law plans to allow news creators to charge news aggregators to use their stories. As part of the media buildup, the Government points to France or Germany, both of which have introduced similar laws recently. As I said yesterday, the new law is nonsense, pure pandering to elderly newspaper editors who don’t understand the Internet for short term political gain, and will stifle innovation whilst not touching the vast Internet giants Continue reading The Google News tax, and how it’s failed elsewhere in Europe→

Spain stifles innovation – this new content law is useless.

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The government has proposed a new Intellectual Property law that has everyone excited, because it contains what is called a “Google” tax. Note the proposed bit – it hasn’t been voted on yet. We don’t even, it seems, have the full draft of the law, it hasn’t been officially released. But people are excited. Now, the idea is that websites which use content from other people must pay a “fair usage fee”. In theory, it Continue reading Spain stifles innovation – this new content law is useless.→

Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Microsoft & Yahoo paid just a million in tax

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Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Microsoft & Yahoo paid a combined total of 1.251.608 euros in tax last year in Spain. Not news, after the UK fuss, but it seems to have shocked Spain. They follow the usual protocol of just having a local subsidary to look after advertising, merchants, etc in the country, but booking all revenue offshore. What’s worse, is that they have a very small combined staff in Spain. Meaning that, unlike the Continue reading Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Microsoft & Yahoo paid just a million in tax→

Google flight search takes off in Spain

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Google Flights has launched for Spain, showing a comprehensive network of flights into and out of Spain, and a price comparision tool. http://www.google.com/flights/ However, rather annoyingly, none of the major “low costs” such as Ryanair, Easyjet, LAN or Binter Canarias (who?!) allow their flights to appear on it. You can also see a map showing stop overs, etc. Quite fun for about 45 seconds. For some reason – prices are quoted in US$. So, actually, Continue reading Google flight search takes off in Spain→

Google wave

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I opened up my email box this am to find an invitation to trial the new beta version of a product from Google called “Wave”. Google wave is, according to the blurb: Google Wave is an online communication and collaboration tool that makes real-time interactions more seamless — in one place, you can communicate and collaborate using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. A wave is a conversation with multiple participants — participants Continue reading Google wave→

Google Docs Design Flaw May Fool You Into Making Your Docs Editable by Anyone

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While I assume that the number of people using Google Docs in Almeria can probably be counted on one hand (prove me wrong people!), there’s an interesting article from wired.com on the security settings: Wired.com has discovered a design flaw in the web app’s user interface that could lead users to mistakenly open up their docs to editing by anybody on the internet. Funny thing is, we found out about it the hard way. A Continue reading Google Docs Design Flaw May Fool You Into Making Your Docs Editable by Anyone→