Google yesterday announced new partnerships with 8 European Press Agencies including Belga to host news content in Google News. The news comes 2 years after the Brussels court ruling that Google News was infringing Belgian copyright laws by placing press agency content on its news portal. Exciting as the news may seem to PR professionals, it is no secret that Belgian content in Dutch could still be found via Google News over the past years. The 2007 court ruling specifically focused on 18 French- and German-language newspapers represented by Copiepresse. As yesterday’s annoucement did not mention any other Belgian news agencies besides Belga, it remains unclear what will happen with Belgian content from these French and German newspapers. Moreover, the Belgian Google News portal only gives you the option to choose België for Dutch language content or Belgique for French language content. German language content for Belgium is not included as an option. In addition, the Dutch part seems quite mixed up with Google News Netherlands, whereas the French part includes content from Google News France. You would think that for Google, it would be easy to make a distinction between country based content.
Google News to host content from Belga
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