I’m certain that whatever the tax is it will be deductible on their USA tax.
Good for the EU! I approve.
Taxes are a cost of doing business. The tax will be paid by net users. How? They will see more ad trash.
Enjoy, Euro-fools.
Another threat on the horizon.
All hands on deck. This will eventually be aimed at us.
Google should pull their servers out of Spain. ay off all the employees who work here. Screw em.
Tax the good deeds, reward corrupt politicians, socialism for yah.
Where are the internet rule which say that news stories cannot be aggregated into web searches? Anyone?
WTF is this? Screw these people.
The Founding Fathers would be shocked if they could see how their concept of a very limited copyright has become virtually without limit.
Google is run by Liberals. They should be thrilled at this opportunity to pay taxes! (or should it be called an “investment?”)
It’s about time. Google makes many billions of dollars selling ads for views of content that other people created. Then they make more selling data about everyone that looks at that content, or the accompanying ads. We used to call that “free-riding”, or worse.
I don't think the ruling Popular Party is going to be very popular in the future.
I do business on the Internet, and Content. I desperately WANT Google to find me.
I'll bet it did. The other side of the equation is that this "free" use is also "free" advertisement. You can't have the latter without putting up with the former.
It's certainly the right of the material's originator to charge and restrict use as he/she desires. That's why FR disallows postings from those who desire it, extracts from those who desire it, and why links to the original media are supplied in the posting. For a third party such as the government to intrude on this transaction by levying a tax is the sort of thing governments do that sound fine and end up with negative consequences. As it did in Germany.
Every politician elected should have this lesson tattooed on his/her/its forehead so they can see it in the mirror every morning: taxes do two things: they generate revenue and discourage the activity being taxed. You can't have the one without the other.
And so taxing this sort of thing will discourage it as well, and that might not be a good thing overall. And there is an additional question that government should find uncomfortable but does not: it will generate revenue...for whom? For the content owners, or for the government? Is 100% of this transferred to the former, or does the government take its cut off the top for "administrative" purposes? And if the latter, who really is the beneficiary? And why does government tend to grow?
Google makes their stuff accessible to the world.
All they have to do is stop including Spanish material in their searches.
Spain will either back down or fall off the (google) map.
So that means that if a Spanish user searches for this thread I will get some of that tax passed on to me because of this post. I'll go out to the mailbox and wait for the check.
Funny, how by protecting the owners of any intellectual property the government will likely get 100% of the profits while those they protect will get nothing. Even the mafia can't get that deal when they sell protection.
That’s about as dumb as record companies charging radio stations to play their songs.