Google's not happy with Germany's proposed law which would have it pay for including links to news sites and it's making it known. It launched a campaign to get people aware of the law, which is set for a debate in Parliament starting tomorrow, dubbed “Defend your web.”
As you'd expect, German politicians instead aren't happy with Google's campaign, calling it “cheap propaganda” according to a Reuters
report.
Politicians are criticizing Google for using people to do its lobbying. German newspapers are equally unamused, calling it “panic mongering.”
It is a bit ironic to call Google's campaign “lobbying” when the law is the result of the newspaper industry getting politicians to artificially prop up the dying business.
Also ironic, though other words could describe it, is politicians painting Google's campaign as an attempt at
monopolizing opinion making, when Google, a search engine, is up against the entire media industry which, presumably, still has a bit of sway in shaping public opinion.
Otherwise, if indeed Google through a YouTube video is a more powerful force than the entire German media, it would go a long way towards explaining why newspapers need subsidies from Google to exist; their readers have long stopped caring about them.
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