Gunther Oettinger, who has just taken over as EU digital commissioner from Neelie Kroos, has threatened Google with the imposition of a copyright levy. Today, he told German publication Handelsblatt that, if Google makes use of European intellectual property, then the EU can impose a levy for its use, Business World reported. His comments follow a high-profile struggle between German publishers and Google over the search company displaying news snippets without compensating them for doing it. Earlier this month Google said it would stop displaying those snippets, and instead would limited results to a link and headline. However a consortium of publishers behind VG Media, backed by German publishing giant, Axel Springer, criticized the move as “blackmail”.
