Google actually does ask, it is called robots.txt [0]. Robots.txt is the technical equivalent of asking nicely. If the publishers don't want Google using snippe

Google actually does ask, it is called robots.txt [0]. Robots.txt is the technical equivalent of asking nicely. If the publishers don't want Google using snippets of their articles or otherwise indexing their articles all publishers need to do is tell Google not to using robots.txt, no law needed [1]. This law won't hurt Google, they have the necessary lawyers and resources to deal with the ramifications. What this will hurt are the smaller search engines that don't have the same resources as Google. This law, if enacted, will end up giving more power to Google not less. For example, with the German law, Google was given a free license [2], but was DuckDuckGo given a license? As far as I can tell no. So all that changed is that Google has a license and its competitors don't. I can't see how this is a good thing for anybody but Google. It hurts consumers, reduces market choice and will end up hurting publishers. [0] - http://www.robotstxt.org/orig.html http://www.robotstxt.org/orig.html [1] - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608 https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608 [2] - https://the-digital-reader.com/2014/10/22/german-publishers-cave-grant-google-free-permission-use-snippets-search-results/ https://the-digital-reader.com/2014/10/22/german-publishers-...