Google Inc. (GOOG): Quick Hits from France, Germany

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Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has been working the halls of Parliament in Germany, lobbying hard against a copyright-protection law. Google’s work has cleared an initial step, as the lower house of Parliament narrowly approved a “watered-down” version of a copyright law, which allows search engine like Google to display single words or very short snippets of news articles in their search results without having to pay royalties for showing the content. The initial push was to essentially force search engines to pay these news organizations to show snippets or summaries of stories, because these organizations claimed that showing those samples would have discouraged click-throughs and traffic and would have lost money.

The bill passed the lower house by a 293-243 vote, but is expected to face some serious resistance in the upper house.

What do you think? Is Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) in trouble in France, and can it massage this new copyright bill through the German Parliament? How do you think either of these items will affect Google’s influence and market share in Europe? We’d like your thoughts in the comments section below.

DISCLOSURE: I own no positions in any stock mentioned.

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