Google is closing Google News in Spain rather than comply with a new law which would force it to pay publishers for their links and headlines.
The new intellectual property law, which comes in on 1 January, would allow Spanish publishers to charge services such as Google News to display their content online.
Google has however said that this system is "unsustainable" as the company makes no money from its news search service.
Reports from over 70 Spanish publishers will also be blocked from the international edition of Google News as of 16 December.
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Richard Gingras, head of Google News, announced on his blog last night: “Sadly, as the result of a new Spanish law, we’ll shortly have to close Google News in Spain.
“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.”
In 2012 Brazil’s National Association of Newspapers, representing 90 per cent of the nation’s newspaper circulation, agreed to pull their content from Google News after the internet giant refused to pay for thse use of headlines.
Last year Google adopted an opt-in policy for news aggregation in Germany after the country changed its copyright laws so that the company would have to pay compensation to German news publishers.
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