Philip Oltermann in Berlin 

Meet Mathias Döpfner, the German publisher taking the fight to Google

The CEO of Germany's largest newspaper group is one of the few powerful figures speaking out about the web giant
  
  

Bild
Bild, Germany's bestselling tabloid, is one of Axel Springer SE's titles. Photograph: Steven May/Alamy Photograph: Steven May/Alamy

Mathias Döpfner is a man on a mission. The motives behind the mission need to be scrutinised, but when so many of old media's authority figures seem at sea in a changing environment, it's a spectacle to behold.

Döpfner is the CEO of Axel Springer SE, Europe's biggest newspaper publisher, which owns its bestselling tabloid, Bild. It also used to own some relatively successful regional German newspapers and magazines, but in July 2013, most of them were unceremoniously dumped.

His new mission statement? Springer should become "the world's leading digital publisher", as Döpfner reiterated in his keynote speech at the Global Media Forum in Bonn on Monday.

The company introduced a partial paywall for Bild's online offering, acquired the TV news channel N24, and turned the publishing operation behind its last remaining flagship broadsheet, Die Welt, upside down, so that the web editors now commission the content and a team of 12 editors compile the print edition from the online bounty.

But Döpfner, a former journalist who once wrote a PhD thesis on the history of German postwar music criticism, didn't stop there. He went on to pick a battle with the biggest opponent in the media landscape: Google.

In April, he wrote an open letter to Google's executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, in which he accused the US company of operating a business model that "in less reputable circles would be called a protection racket", and of discriminating against competitors in its search rankings. Google's motto was "if you don't want us to finish you off, you'd better pay", he wrote .

Last Wednesday, he told the Radio 4's Today programme: "We need a simple rule of fair and transparent search criteria, and I think the product that has the highest traffic should be on the top rank and the product that has the lowest traffic should be on the lowest rank. But unfortunately, Google is not respecting that."

More covertly, he's trying to rally political support for a European media uprising against the US internet giants Google, Amazon and Facebook. Döpfner wrongfooted Angela Merkel when he wrote a strong endorsement of Jean-Claude Juncker's candidacy for president of the European commission in Bild in May, insisting that anyone but the Luxembourgian getting the job would "turn democracy into a farce". Merkel, previously thought to have been sceptical about Juncker, sensed a shift in the public opinion and endorsed him.

But if Döpfner cared only about democratic principle, and not about commercial prospects, he would be the head of a human rights NGO, not the chief executive of Europe's biggest publishing house. Since Juncker got the job, Springer's outlets have reminded him of his commitment to creating a digital single market in Europe, and the need for a powerful digital commissioner. They see consolidation as the best way to liberate the European media from the grip of US internet giants.

At the Bonn speech on Monday, Döpfner said that Google was "abusing a market dominating position", likening it to someone who owned 91% of roads in Germany ruling that only certain types of cars were allowed to drive on it. This is the height of hypocrisy coming from a media empire which for decades abused its dominant market-position in the German media to impose a reactionary agenda on policymakers.

But powerful figures speaking out against Google are hard to come by, and those who genuinely want to achieve a more level playing field can't be too picky about their allies. As long as one recognises Springer's hypocrisy, the sight of old Europe lecturing America about the free market is simply too sweet a sight to behold.

• The headline and article were amended on Sunday 6 July to correct the spelling of Mathias Döpfner's first name.

 

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