The purpose of this regulation is to protect the companies and journalists who actually assemble and write the news against a predatory business model.
This benefits the newssite, not google.
Those few lines function as an advertisement for the actual article. Usually companies have to pay for advertisements...
Since Google makes money off of most online ad sales, it often directly benefits Google as well.
Google makes a significant portion of the value for each ad.
> For displaying ads with AdSense for content, publishers receive 68% of the revenue recognized by Google in connection with the service. For AdSense for search, publishers receive 51% of the revenue recognized by Google. [ 0]
The news companies can opt to give away their content to Google for free. The directive merely gave these companies more choice, by stopping illegal web scraping without asking first.
This was never about choice, which they've always had, this has always been about both having their cake and eating it to. When French publishers inevitably see their traffic plummet, they will almost certainly sue Google for it.
The point is that it is always opt-in, though. There is no such thing as "use it as you like unless the copyright holder opts-out" anywhere in copyright law. You cannot just e.g. use substantial portions of someone else's texts in your own publications[1], sample a part of someone else's music for your own song, use someone else's graphics as your own, use an unlicensed font, etc., without a written permission by the copyright holder.
The EU directive merely ensures that existing laws are enforced instead of being systematically violated by large corporations.
Independently, of course, you could ask whether copyright law should be that way. I personally don't think so, and think it should be changed in various ways that strongly disfavor large corporations, but that's a completely different discussion. What I try to explain here is the rationale of the EU commission, which primarily thinks in legal terms, not my personal views about that matter.
If you ask for my personal views, I do find it appalling that large companies like Google (and Uber, Microsoft, AirBnB, etc.) continue to try to circumvent laws in ways that no small companies could get through with in court, simply because they have the business power and enough lawyers to give it a try.
[1] beyond fair use, which is very limited and does not apply int his case.
> After the passage of the law Google asked German publishers to explicitly opt-in or be excluded from search results as protection against liability. Publishers opted-in but filed an antitrust complaint, arguing they were effectively forced by Google to waive their copyrights.
No, but snippets are considered fair use. At least, they were until Article 13 killed the concept.
You want to play a role in the game? Well, then do your bidding...