Google won’t have to pay German news publishers to show short snippets of news, thanks to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s parliamentary coalition. But the law doesn’t specify how long those snippets can be. And the publishers association is also claiming victory, saying that the new legislation allows them to decide how Google — and others — can use their content.

In other words, Germany has replaced a complete mess with an entirely new complete mess. Which is perfectly reflected in the news coverage:

Bloomberg reports that “Google defeats publishers over web copyright in German vote.” GigaOm reports that “German parliament passes ‘Google tax’ law, forcing royalty payments for news snippets.

Which means no one has a clue.

The good part for Google is that the new law says aggregators can display “single words or very small text excerpts” without paying royalties. The good part for German publishers — according to the publishers — is that they get to choose whether and how aggregators use their content:

An automatic right of use is not associated with the approved scheme. Rather, it is open to publishers to make the business decision that they agree with search engines and aggregators who wish to use the content for commercial publishing.

[This] gives the publishers a fair policy instrument with which to make decisions on the commercial use of their content by search engines and aggregators themselves. This is a real signal of parliament, which underscores the value of a free press and journalistic content.

The worst part of the new law would seem to be the fact that the bill does not define what “very small text excerpts” are. Is that five words? Ten? The first paragraph? The phrase is completely open to interpretation, and putting “single words” just before it only makes them trend to really, really, really small. A quick check of Google News reveals that an average snippet on the site right now seems to be in the 20-  to 30-word range.

Does that count? Will a judge in a new case brought a few months from now agree that 20-30 words is “very small?”

All of which means that the short version of this article is: Google and news publishers in Germany are going to have more problems before this all gets figured out, and this recent legislation was a complete waste of time.

photo credit: dullhunk via photopin cc

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Google’s getting wiser to the tablet experience every day. Today, it debuted a minor update to Google News that makes it more pleasant to browse on the iPad or on Android tablets like the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10.

The new update lets you “swipe” left and right to switch between sections, such as “Top Stories,” “U.S.,” “Technology,” and so forth.

It’s also got a new, sans-serif font display that looks cleaner, with greater differentiation between headlines and the snippets of text teasing each story, and there’s more white space in the layout to give the stories “breathing room.”

Clicking on each story will take you to the source site, so this new interface is just for browsing headlines. Contrast that to Google’s amazingly useful (but still somewhat ugly) Google Reader app for Android tablets, which lets you plow through RSS feeds by swiping from story to story as easily as flipping pages in a magazine.

If Google brought the same clean design it uses in the new Google News to Google Reader, I’d be a happy tablet user indeed.

To check out the new look, just visit news.google.com with an iPad or Android tablet.

And don’t miss our holiday guide to the year’s best tablets.

via the Google News blog

Previously, Google News had been showing users the unobtrusive +1 button next to articles to let users upvote or recommend particular items.

With the addition of today’s features, signed-in Google+ users will easily be able to see the articles their friends have been reading and sharing, as well.

In the Google News Spotlight section, users will now sometimes see articles their Gmail contacts and Google+ friends have publicly chosen to +1. Each user’s profile picture is visible next to the headline in question.

Also, you can choose to +1 the stories yourself as well as sharing and commenting on the articles with your Google+ circles.

“We hope this change helps you find more great articles to enjoy, and gives more power to your +1s,” wrote Google software engineer Erich Schmidt on the compay’s official blog.

Google has for some time had a plan to slowly incorporate its Google+ social features into all the company’s web applications. The general rollout of Plus features across Google-powered web properties started last month with Google Reader, a somewhat maligned and questionable relevant RSS reader.

Next, the company pulled Plus integrations into Blogger, its widely used CMS and blogging platform. Soon, you will be seeing more Google+ integrations in heavily used sites such as YouTube.

Since it’s eventually going to be part of everything Google does on the web, some have determined Google+ usage to be practically unavoidable, or at least inevitable.

“We think of Google+ as a mode of usage of Google,” said Google executive Bradley Horowitz in a recent interview with VentureBeat.

He went on to say that the Google+ features around other Google products will serve as “a way of lighting up your Google experience as opposed to a new product. It’s something that takes time to appreciate, even internally. It’s easy to think of Google+ as something other than just Google, and I think it’ll take more launches before the world catches up with this understanding.”

Image courtesy of seng1011.

A post on the Google News Blog details the additional features:

Depending on the most recent coverage and materials available for a given story, the page features top articles, quotes from the people in the story, and posts from news blogs. You’ll also find image thumbnails, videos, articles from sources based near the story, and a timeline of articles to trace media coverage of the story.

Click the image atop this story to see a large-size blowup of the buffed-up news search results.

Why is Google doing this? There’s only one answer these days: The additional news results thingies have been heavily tested and found to bring in more revenue.

Google Vice President Marissa Mayer is expected to announce this, and demo it, at 11:45am at the TechCrunch50 conference. This new data will be served up on Google News and Google News Archives.

Google provides the following example of what it is doing: Let’s say you want to learn more about the landing on the Moon. Try a search for [Americans walk on moon], and you’ll be able to find and read an original article from a 1969 edition of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Check it out. Click on the image above, and you’ll see it’s pretty impressive.

Aside from searching the newspapers, you’ll also be able to browse through them exactly as they were printed, including advertisements, headlines and photographs.

The program will expand globally in time, Google says.

Thanks Andy from Beet.tv for the tip.

Click here for all of our DEMO/TechCrunch 50 Conference coverage, including special posts that aren’t on the main VentureBeat page.

The move is controversial, because there’s already considerable tension between Google and newspapers, with Chicago’s Sam Zell, future owner of the Tribune Co., saying Google is stealing traffic.

Articles from the agencies — which include the popular Associated Press, as well as the Press Association of Britain, Canadian Press, and Agence France-Presse — will now have their articles featured with the organizations’ own brands on Google News. So Google effectively keeps the traffic. It won’t link to the versions of the wire stories that run in the newspapers and other sites that publish those same wire stories, so as to avoid duplication. That means newspapers will no longer get traffic they previous enjoyed, resulting in a potential loss of revenue, even though those newspapers pay the wire services and keep them in business. We expect some conflict to arise from this, considering Josh Cohen, business product manager of Google News, said his company will consider running advertising alongside the agencies’ articles, which will likely tick off the newspapers even more. More from Google here.

Google says it won’t be ranking the wire articles higher in its algorithm, meaning they won’t necessarily show higher in the results. However, by weeding out links to duplicate wire stories carried by other sources, the end result is that Google and the wire services will benefit over others.

Here’s an example of a AFP story under the new system. You’ll see it is hosted on Google’s servers. You’ll see a link (left in image below; see arrow) that lets you show all the articles where the story has run, including in other newspapers. However, this is an extra step now that few people are likely to take.