The 'Leistungsschutzrecht'? That was really ridiculous. Publishers could simply opt-out from being indexed but of course being paid for providing snippets of content on Google News sounded like a nicer option.

If you speak german Stefan Niggemeier just created a nice rundown of the events since 2009 that outlines how newspapers and publishers tried to cover the issue in their favor: http://www.stefan-niggemeier.de/blog/ein-kartell-nutzt-seine...