Google News will shut down in Spain following new copyright law

Google News, the Internet giant’s news indexing and search service will soon shut down in Spain, the company announced in a blog post today.

The news comes of the heels of a recently passed copyright law in Spain. As Robert Gingras, head of Google News, writes:

This new legislation requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not. As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the site) this new approach is simply not sustainable.

Google News first launched in 2002 and eventually became available in 70 international editions, covering 35 languages.

This isn’t the first time other countries have challenged Google’s News service. Last year, Germany passed a similar law, though it allowed aggregators to display individual words or “small text snippets.”

Google News will shut down in Spain on December 16, before the law goes into effect in January.