> Given how much of their traffic and online revenue comes from Google they all agreed, rendering the law moot.

I think "revealing the law was based on a false premise" would be more accurate than "rendering the law moot".

The premise of the law was that by showing snippets, Google was taking something away from the newspapers. If that were true, Google's "give us what we were 'taking' for free or we'll stop taking it" deal would have been rejected out of hand. The fact is, Google was providing the newspapers a valuable service by showing the snippets, which is why, given the choice between Google not doing so at all and Google doing so without paying anything, they chose the latter.