LONDON — Google News is saying goodbye to Spain.
伦敦——谷歌新闻(Google News)即将告别西班牙。
The website, which compiles headlines and summaries of news articles from various sources, will go dark in Spain on Dec. 16. Google plans to shut the site there in protest of a new law that would force the company and other news aggregators to pay Spanish publishers for the use of their content.
谷歌新闻将各种来源的新闻标题和摘要聚合起来，显示在网页上，这个网站将于12月16日在西班牙关闭。谷歌计划在西班牙关闭该网站，是为了抗议一项新法律。这项法律要求谷歌及其他新闻聚合网站，为它们所使用的内容向西班牙出版商支付费用。

The rules, which come into force in January, do not specify how much Google and others like Yahoo News would have to pay per article. But they carry a potential one-time $750,000 fine if companies do not comply with the law.
上述规定将于明年1月生效，但法律条文并未具体说明谷歌及雅虎新闻(Yahoo News)等网站需要为每篇文章支付多少费用。但如果这些企业没有遵守规定，则可能需要一次性缴纳75万美元（约合460万元人民币）的罚款。
The legislation follows similar rules in other countries, including France and Germany, that allow publishers to charge when parts of their articles are included in Google’s news aggregation. In those countries, the company has tended to come to terms with the publishers, rather than withdraw from the field. But the Spanish rule will not allow local publishers to forgo such payments.
在西班牙之前，法国和德国等其他国家已经出台了类似的法规，即当谷歌的新闻聚合服务收录了出版商文章的部分内容时，出版商有权收取费用。在这些国家，谷歌常常倾向于跟出版商达成妥协，而不是从相关国家撤出。但西班牙的法规并不允许出版商放弃收费。
And in the case of Spain, it is not clear what parties, if any, will benefit from the new rules.
具体到西班牙的情况，尚不清楚是否会有任何一方能从新规的实施中受益。
While the law is aimed at providing much-needed revenue to Spanish publishers, which are struggling to generate income from their online offerings, the loss of Google News and the traffic that it sends to local newspapers may end up hurting publishers that often rely on the company’s service to direct people to their websites. In Germany, some publishers have opted to waive their right to demand fees, rather than lose the traffic Google sends their way.
这项规定旨在向西班牙出版商提供急需的营收，它们目前难以从在线服务中取得收入。尽管如此，失去谷歌新闻，以及它为当地报纸带去的流量，可能最终还是会损害出版商的利益，因为后者常常依靠谷歌的服务，来把人们引导到自己的网站。在德国，一些出版商宁可放弃索取费用的权利，也不愿意失去谷歌带来的流量。
But Google’s dominance of Europe’s online world — its search business holds a market share of about 85 percent, bigger than in the United States — has European officials trying to rein it in.
但谷歌在欧洲互联网行业的主导地位已经促使欧洲官员设法对其加以限制。其搜索业务占有约85%的市场份额，比在美国的市场份额还大。
The European antitrust authorities in Brussels asked on Thursday for more information from online mapping and travel companies as part of the European Commission’s long-running investigation into Google’s business practices. And the search engine has been struggling to cope with a European privacy ruling this year that allows people to ask that some links about themselves be removed from global search results.
周四，布鲁塞尔的欧洲反垄断官员要求在线地图和旅行企业提供更多信息，这是欧盟委员会(European Commission)对谷歌商业行为的长期调查的一部分。谷歌也一直在艰难应对今年欧洲做出的一项隐私保护方面的裁决，即人们有权要求在全球搜索结果中，删除与自己有关的某些链接。
Google, which reported revenue of $16.5 billion in the third quarter, said on Thursday that the Spanish law, which has been nicknamed the Google Tax, would make it too costly for the company to continue operating its local news site, although Spanish publishers’ content would still be available in its regular search results.
谷歌三季度录得1650亿美元营收。该公司周四表示，西班牙这项被戏称为“谷歌税”的法律，使该公司在当地继续运营该新闻网站的成本变得十分高昂。不过，西班牙出版商的内容仍将出现在常规的搜索结果中。
‘‘It’s with real sadness that we’ll remove Spanish publishers from Google News, and close Google News in Spain,’’ Richard Gingras, the head of Google News, said in a blog post, adding that the search engine’s news product directed millions of readers to publishers’ websites. ‘‘As Google News itself makes no money (we do not show any advertising on the site), this new approach is simply not sustainable.’’
“我们将在谷歌新闻中去除西班牙出版商的内容，并在西班牙关闭谷歌新闻服务，我们对此真的很伤心，”谷歌新闻负责人理查德·金格拉斯(Richard Gingras)在一篇博客中写道。他接着表示，该搜索引擎的新闻产品会为出版商的网站带去数百万读者。“因为谷歌新闻本身不赚钱（在这个网站上我们没有展示任何广告），所以这种新方式根本无法持续下去。”
In response, Spain’s Ministry of Culture, which helped draft the new rules, said in a statement that Google’s choosing to close its local news aggregator was a ‘‘business decision’’ separate from the country’s legal process, and that news and other information would still be freely available on the Internet.
作为回应，参与起草新规定的西班牙文化部在一份声明中表示，谷歌选择关闭在当地的新闻聚合服务属于“商业决策”，与该国的法律程序无关，并且人们依然可以免费在互联网上获取新闻和其他信息。
As part of Google’s decision to shut Google News in Spain, which is the first time the company has taken down its aggregator service for legal reasons, it will also remove all Spanish publishers, including El País, from its global news aggregating products.
在西班牙关闭谷歌新闻服务的同时，谷歌还决定从其全球新闻聚合产品中去除所有西班牙出版商的内容，包括《国家报》(El País)。这是谷歌首次因法律原因关闭聚合服务。
In total, Google News in Spain receives about 3.5 million visitors a month, making it the 226th most-visited site in the country, according to SimilarWeb, a digital measurement company. That compares with more than 250 million monthly visitors in the United States, where Google News is the 30th most-visited website.
在线统计公司SimilarWeb的数据显示，西班牙的谷歌新闻每月会有约350万访客，是该国访问量排名226位的网站。而在美国，谷歌新闻的月访客数超过2.5亿，访问量排在第30位。
Although the Spanish law is aimed solely at online news aggregators, changes in how people use technology may soon make the rules redundant.
尽管西班牙那项法律针对的只是在线新闻聚合服务，但随着人们使用技术的方式发生改变，相关规定可能很快就会显得多此一举。
That is because individuals, many of whom rely on smartphones to surf the web, are increasingly finding news content through online searches and social media posts, not aggregation sites.
这是因为，个人用户正越来越多地通过在线搜索和社交媒体上的帖子，而非聚合网站来获取新闻内容。他们中的许多人依靠智能手机上网。
The Spanish newspaper El Mundo, for example, receives just 1.3 percent of its monthly traffic from Google News, compared with 34 percent from search engine queries, according to SimilarWeb. In contrast, the news agency Reuters still relies on news aggregators for about 44 percent of its Internet traffic in the United States.
比如，SimilarWeb的数据显示，西班牙《世界报》(El Mundo)每月通过谷歌新闻获得的流量仅占1.3%，而通过搜索获得的流量比例却高达34%。与之形成对比的是，在美国，路透社(Reuters)依然有大约44%的网络流量依赖于新闻聚合器。
For some publishers, however, Google News still plays an important role in how people consume digital content.
不过对部分出版商而言，谷歌新闻对于人们消费数字内容的方式，仍然起着重要的作用。
After Germany passed rules that permitted publishers to charge aggregating sites when their articles appeared online, Google removed many German organizations from its news product, which led to a drastic fall in online traffic to some newspapers’ sites.
在德国通过法律允许出版商在其文章出现在网络上时，向聚合网站收费之后，谷歌从其新闻产品中删除了许多德国新闻机构的内容，导致部分报纸的网站流量骤减。
Axel Springer, which has talked openly about Google’s dominance, experienced a 40 percent decline in traffic coming from Google’s search results and an 80 percent drop in traffic from Google News, according to Mathias Döpfner, Axel Springer’s chief executive.
阿克塞尔·斯普林格(Axel Springer)曾公开讨论过谷歌的主导地位。该公司的首席执行官玛蒂亚斯·德普夫纳(Mathias Döpfner)表示，谷歌搜索结果带来的流量减少了40%，谷歌新闻带来的流量减少了80%。
Mr. Döpfner said that Axel Springer would have ‘‘shot ourselves out of the market’’ if the company had continued demanding that news aggregating sites pay a licensing fee for its content.
德普夫纳称，如果斯普林格继续要求新闻聚合网站为其内容支付授权费，公司已经“把自己赶出市场了”。
Google has faced similar challenges with French and Belgian publishers, but eventually reached an agreement with local newspapers, which includes the creation of $74 million fund to help French publishers with their digital operations.
在法国和比利时的出版商面前，谷歌也遭遇了类似的挑战，但它最终与当地的报纸达成了一项协议，内容包括设立一项7400万美元的基金，以便为法国出版商的数字业务提供帮助。