Google Bites Belgium Bullet

September 25th, 2006

After some recent trouble in Belguim courts Google has been ordered to stop reproducing snippets from French-language newspapers or face a fine of €1,000,000 per day. “We are asking for Google to pay and seek our authorization to use our content … Google sells advertising and makes money on our content,” Boribon told Reuters. Unfortunately, he seems to be missing the bigger picture that, yes Google uses content but also directs huge amounts of traffic to their sources.

In response, Google has removed the links to resources and banned them from their index. It is important for businesses to see that being listed in Google is a privilege, not a right as some people think. Unfortunately for Google, the Belgium court ordered that the ruling must be display in full, on their homepage - or face more fines. Google lost its appeal against this ruling.

This is the state the www.google.be homepage was left in..