jecasc - 7:25 pm on Aug 29, 2012 (gmt 0)

Netmeg one incentive that comes to mind really quickly without giving this thing much thought is if google rivals decide to comply and pay for use of snippets whereas google decides not to

Actually I think it will be the other way round. Some will demand money and Google will throw them out of the index. Others offering similar content will be happy to give Google a free license of usage and be happy about the new visitors. This can easily be managed by a robots.txt command. Google will intruduce a new robots.txt command and a new meta tag publishers can use to grant a free license. Two weeks after the law is in effect everybody will have opted in.

After all any publisher today could remove his content from Google or any other search engine and try to negotiate money for allowing Google to index his website. The reason it is not happening is simple: There is too much competition. Search engines will laugh them in the face and say: You need us more than we need you. And they are right. There is not a single website I can think of that is so unique and its content so valuable it has enough leverage to demand money for getting listed in a search engine.