In 2014 Google News decided to cease offering its services in Spain due to strict legislation regulating how news links and excerpts are shared online. But now winds of change are blowing through the streets of Madrid. In response to new laws passed in EU capital Brussels, Spain is loosening its restrictions on link sharing and Google has announced that it will be resuming its news service in Spain early next year.

The initial law that prompted Google News to pull out of Spain required all news aggregators to pay a collective fee to the Spanish media industry for the right to share headlines and excerpts from news publishers. The law directly targeted Google News, and in lieu of paying a fee, Google opted to shutter its news service in Spain. There were even worries it might shut down in Europe entirely. In 2019 the EU passed a law called the European Copyright Directive. The relevant bit is Article 15 which allows news publishers to require a fee for their content to be linked or excerpted. Once this law passed in the EU, member nations had two years to update their legislation which is exactly what Spain and other EU members are doing now.

The big difference between then and now (and the reason that Google News is returning to Spain) is that news aggregators can negotiate directly with the publishers instead of paying a blanket fee for access to all online media outlets. Fuencisla Clemares, Google’s Iberian VP, said “the new copyright law allows Spanish media outlets — big and small — to make their own decisions about how their content can be discovered and how they want to make money with that content.”

More and more countries have been using similar fees to prop up their local publishing industries. Last year Google announced it would be paying licensing fees to publishers around the world for access to their content. And on Monday Google said it had already started discussions with hundreds of publishers across Europe where the law is now in effect.

But the issue isn’t without contention. When Google announced it would be ending its news service in Spain, many bemoaned it as a dark day for Internet freedom, predicting a slippery slope from banning link sharing to a completely filtered Internet experience. Others cheered the victory of the local publishers over the mighty Google.

The truth is somewhere in between. Google does receive a material benefit from sharing news stories on its platform and publishers want more control over how their content is consumed (especially as more and more people get their news online). And most importantly, the people who consume the news deserve to have access to it.