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But the value of that service is because of Google's monopoly position in search in Germany (where its market share is in the 90's last I heard; much higher than in the US).

In other words, the newspapers have no choice but to take whatever terms Google offers them. That's a very bad state of competition in the search market. A search monopoly in Germany gives Google a huge amount of power over not only search but other industries, even the news media.

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You either have snippet-royalties or you have viable and useful search engines that operate without a paywall. They are mutually exclusive. If royalty negotiations were required for all content before a snippet could be used, either the search engine will index only a few major players (only the head of the long tail), or the cost of obtaining agreements would exceed any potential revenues. It's not because of a monopoly player in the market, the dysfunction applies to all potential search engines. And the minor players in such a regime would be even at a greater disadvantage, lacking the resources to come to arrangements. Be careful what you wish for.

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