German media company Axel Springer has backed off its demands that Google Inc. pay for access to some of its content, bowing instead to the U.S. Internet giant after restricted access caused traffic to plunge.Springer, one of Google’s most outspoken critics in Europe, said continuing to limit Google’s access to four of its websites would have cost each of them tens of thousands of euros in revenue every year. The company has now granted Google a free license to use the content from welt.de, computerbild.de, sportbild.de and autobild.de.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/11/05/axel-springer-losing-web-traffic-bows-to-google-on-content/