See the thing is you are arguing about what the lawsuit was about, which is different to what the judgment was.
It says there in black and white "to remove it from all sites".
Or am I just reading that wrong?
You're reading it wrong. It was a copyright infringement lawsuit over the scraped content displayed by Google News and in Google's cache, so the court's ruling was to remove those infringing materials from those services, not to remove the hyperlinks to the original articles in the general search engine.
You failed to provide quotation supporting your statements, and there were quotes saying otherwise :-)
The lawsuit is public knowledge, with plenty of articles written and a decision published online. I think we both know that I was getting voted down because I was correcting misinformation about a court decision against Google. :)
At any rate, this lawsuit is bullshit, and should be called out till they blush. The webserver has been likened to house left with doors wide open and robbed in absence of the owner (page 36.). Seriously?
If you started a newspaper that did nothing but copied the headlines and lead paragraphs from, say, the New York Times, how long do you think it would be before you got a cease-and-desist letter in the mail? That's copyrighted material.
For a wider picture: the newspapers joined (by publishing public websites) a well established space: the Internet. It takes serious incompetence -- or malice -- to move somewhere and not follow well-documented, mutually-benefiting local rules.
There's a rule stating that content-owners are supposed to let another company take their work and make money off of it? What rules are you referring to specifically?
Let's be clear: Google is no schoolyard bully here -- even if it was elsewhere the other day
That's arguable, but more importantly, it's a dangerous maneuver for Google in anti-monopoly Europe.
Your post demonstrates a misunderstanding over what the lawsuit was about. Publishers weren't suing to make Google stop linking to them. Google News was displaying full excerpts from copyright articles, sometimes entire paragraphs, and on top of that making money off that content through the display of ads. It was a copyright infringement lawsuit.
There is no monopoly on web search.
Google has over 65% market share in search. Second is Yahoo with only 16%.
The lawsuit was over the use of copyrighted excerpts from articles in the Google News aggregator and cache, such as lead paragraphs.
Google is trying to pretend that the court ruled all hyperlinks to be illegal. Google was defiant before over this ruling when it ignored an order to publish the results of the verdict on its website, so it's not far-fetched to believe Google is once again throwing its weight around and reminding people of the power it wields over the livelihoods of content creators.
That's incorrect. The court's ruling specifically pertains to the use of article content in the Google News aggregator and its storage in Google's cache. There is no mention of simply linking to articles in the search engine, nor would there be reason for one since the lawsuit was over the use of copyrighted article excerpts, not hyperlinks.
What Google is doing is akin to the punishments Microsoft used to dole out in the 90s, such as increasing Windows OEM licensing fees or threatening to revoke licenses entirely. Google is playing a dangerous game in monopoly-conscious Europe.
* EDIT: Oh good, my Google fanboi-ness is not in vain. The court ruling actually ordered that links be removed from "Google Web [sic]" as well. Oh well, the joke's on the newspapers then, as it appears they asked for it! (see roel_v's comment: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2776384) *
That's in reference to the Google cache of lead paragraphs and other article excerpts. The lawsuit was not about general links in the search engine. Publishers sued because Google News was displaying lead paragraphs and other copyrighted writing in the aggregator.
If you started your own newspaper that copied all the headlines and lead paragraphs from the New York Times, it wouldn't be long before the New York Times sent you a legal letter.