Google to temporarily remove EU news publishers' content from search results

It’s no surprise that major tech giants are in the firing line of the European Commission (EU) for different reasons. More recently, the EU warned Apple over its geo-blocking practices and ordered it to reply in one month. Talking of tech giants, Google is another name that has announced that it’ll run a small time-limited test in which it will remove EU news from the search results.

Google will remove content from EU news publishers as part of a small time-limited test

The decision comes as a response after EU regulators and publishers asked Google for “additional data about the effect of news content in Search.” The Mountain View giant notes that this temporary test will help it assess the impact on the search experience of its users and traffic to publishers based in the EU.

The planned test will affect 1% of users in France, Greece, Italy, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Poland, Spain, and the Netherlands. It’s worth noting that the company will only remove EU news articles from Search, Google News, and Discover.

Google also adds that it will continue to show results from websites and publishers based outside of the EU. The company will further resume displaying results from EU news publishers once this test is over. Despite being a small test, it appears to be a toned-down warning for the news publishers in the EU.

The test will supposedly help determine the impact on traffic to EU publishers

The test will help EU news publishers assess how much traffic they’d miss out on without Google. For Google, the test results will tell whether or not its users in the EU care about news results. The fact is that Google has been battling hard against regulations that force it to compensate publishers for their content.

In the EU, Google has been running a licensing program for publishers called Extended News Previews (ENP). The company started it to comply with Article 15 of the European Copyright Directive (EUCD). All in all, it’ll be interesting to see the results of this test and how Google plans to proceed with its operations in the EU in the long run.