German publishers of multiple news sites have asked Google to start displaying snippets and thumbnails once again, 3 weeks after Google removed them from Google News.

In a highly publicized case, 200+ German news publishers were fighting Google in court over the use of snippets and thumbnails in Google News, and Google made the decision to remove the snippets and thumbnails to minimize legal risk.  I speculated at the time that those participating news sites would experience a huge drop off in traffic from Google News as people would click on other search results that had snippet text and thumbnails.  That did happen, and those publishers want that lost traffic back.

TechCrunch reports that the loss of revenue from the snippet change is behind the publishers deciding that Google can use snippets from them again.

For all the unhappiness directed at Google by German publishers who accuse the company of financially benefiting from freely reusing their content to power its News search service, publishers have found it remarkably difficult to wean themselves off of Google and go it alone without the traffic that being made visible by Google inevitably generates.

The VG Media group said that lost revenues caused by a fall in traffic as a result of Google not using their snippets could trigger bankruptcies. Hence it now bowing to Google’s dominant marketshare.

It is unclear if the snippets are now being displayed by Google or if they are still showing without snippets.