Google displays ‘empty’ search pages to European users

January 25, 2019

Kerrie Ashall

Recently, Google shared screenshots of proposed search engine results pages that would display if the EU passes Articles 11 and 13 of the EU Copyright Directive. The search results appear empty, as if they have failed to load correctly, and only links are displayed:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Image from Search Engine Land 

These types of results were then shown to European users, as discussed on Twitter:

 

The experiment was, according to Google, ‘to understand what the impact of the proposed EU Copyright Directive would be to our users and publisher partners.”

Two provisions that are part of this proposal are Articles 11 & 13. Article 11 would mean that Google and other search engines are required to pay licensing fees when displaying snippets of content. Article 13 requires certain platforms, such as Google and social media sites including Facebook and Twitter, to monitor content uploads for potential copyright infringement.

The full Twitter forum is below:

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