The decision comes in the wake of the approval of the new Intellectual Property Law with the votes of the ruling Popular Party (PP) in the Spanish Congress in October.
This law comes into effect on Jan. 1, 2015 and requires Google and similar sites to pay "fair compensation" to publishers to reproduce their content, Xinhua-OANA reported.
Although other countries, such as Germany, Belgium and France, have approved similar legislation, the main difference between them and Spain is that Intellectual Property Laws in these countries allow news groups to authorize search engines to use their content for free or on reaching individual agreements. In Spain, however, the charge is fixed, meaning groups cannot choose to waive or negotiate the tax.
This means Spain will become the first nation where Google has closed its news service and links to Spanish media articles will be removed from its global services.
"The new approach is not sustainable for us," explained the head of Google News, Richard Gringras.
This decision will not stop links to news stories from the Spanish media appearing on the Google search engine as this functions on a different basis and for the moment it is difficult to know just what effect Googles decision will have on the Spanish media.
Editor: Priyambodo RH
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