Google was slapped with a 500 million euros (USD593 million) fine by French antitrust authority for failing to negotiate with news organisations over the use of their content.
The regulators gave Google two months to come up with proposals on how to pay publishers for their content or face additional penalties of up to 900,000 euros (USD1.1 million) per day.
“When the regulator imposes obligations for a company, it must comply scrupulously, in both the spirit and letter. In this instance, this was unfortunately not the case,” the antitrust agency’s chief Isabelle de Silva said.
Google failed to comply by not acting “in good faith” in its negotiations with news agencies and publishers and refused to have a specific discussion on paying for news content online, according to da Silva.
In a statement, Google expressed its disappointment with the decision, saying: “We have acted in good faith throughout the entire process. The fine ignores our efforts to reach an agreement, and the reality of how news works on our platforms.”
Google said it has a framework agreement with the Alliance de la Presse d’Information Générale (APIG), which represents French news media. It also has agreements with some leading publications such as Le Monde and Le Figaro.
A Google spokesman told CNBC: “We have acted in good faith throughout the entire process. The fine ignores our efforts to reach an agreement, and the reality of how news works on our platforms.
“To date, Google is the only company to have announced agreements on neighbouring rights. We are also about to finalise an agreement with AFP that includes a global licensing agreement, as well as the remuneration of their neighbouring rights for their press publications.”
The European Union overhauled its copyright laws in 2019, making platforms such as Google and YouTube responsible for copyright infringements committed by their users. France became the first EU country to put the new Digital Copyright Directive into law, which also governed the so-called “neighbouring rights” which are designed to compensate publishers and news agencies for the use of their material.
Australia has also asked tech giants Google and Facebook to compensate news organisations in lieu of using their stories. Facebook initially refused, before coming to an agreement with the government.
Google announced last year that it would pay publishers more than USD1 billion over the next three years through a new program for licensing news that could help struggling media organisations that have lost advertising dollars to social media platforms.
