Alphabet, the parent company of Googlehas reopened the services of Google News in Spain on Wednesday, after eight long years of its shut down. It was reopened when the government last year passed European Union copyright rules, revamped in 2020 into new legislation, and which allowed media outlets to negotiate directly with the tech giant. The services were closed in 2014 after the Spanish government that was ruling passed a rule that forced the company and other news aggregators to pay a collective licensing fee to the publishers for using or republishing the snippets of their news.

An announcement from Google was already prompted last year that it would re-open Google News in the following year. Therefore, Google had also launched a redesigned version of its Google News. During the time of its shutdown, Google conducted research that showed news consumption in Spain was falling when Google News was shut down in 2014, which led to a ten percent reduction in traffic to Spanish publishers’ websites.

Last year itself Google announced, 'Today, on the global 20th anniversary of Google News, and after an almost eight-year hiatus, Google News is soon returning to Spain,' Fuencisla Clemares, VP - Iberia, Google, said in a blogpost. Google has also looked into the matter of planning to launch Google News Showcase it’s a vehicle for paying news publishers, as soon as possible in Spain. The company will also continue to invest in products, programs, and funding through the Google News Initiative.