France fines Google €500m over publication rights

Google must present a remuneration offer, or face a recurring €900,000 fine every day

France's competition authority has fined Google €500m (£427m) for failing to negotiate paid deal with news publishers over the use of their copyrighted content.

In its ruling, Autorité de la Concurrence claimed Google had failed to comply with its April 2020 order, in which the search giant was told to negotiate with news organisations for the right to display snippets of their content in search results, news and other services.

France was the first country in the European Union to implement the bloc's Digital Copyright Directive in 2019. The Directive governs 'neighbouring rights', designed to compensate publishers and news agencies for the use of their material.

Google said earlier this year it would negotiate individual licenses with members of France's press alliance, in compliance with the new law.

In February, the company agreed to pay $76 million over three years to the Alliance de la Presse d'Information Generale (APIG) - a group of 121 French news publishers.

However, Google failed to reach similar paid deals with other publishers, such as Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Two organisations representing press publishers and AFP complained to the Autorité de la Concurrence that Google was ignoring France's law on Digital Copyright Directive.

The Autorité has now ordered Google to present a remuneration offer to news publishers and agencies for the use of their copyrighted content. It also has to provide them with the information needed for evaluating such offers.

Google has two months to implement the order, after which it could be charged up to €900,000 per day.

"When the Autorité imposes injunctions on companies, they are required to apply them scrupulously, respecting their letter and their spirit. In this case, unfortunately, that was not the case," Autorité President Isabelle de Silva said.

She added that Google's negotiations with news publishers "cannot be regarded as having been conducted in good faith, while Google imposed that the discussions necessarily take place within the framework of a new partnership, called Publisher Curated News, which included a new service called Showcase."

"In doing so, Google refused, as it has been asked on several occasions, to have a specific discussion on the remuneration due for current uses of content protected by related rights."

She also warned that the French regulator will be extremely vigilant going forward, to ensure "proper application of its decision, as non-execution can now lead to periodic penalty payment."

A Google spokesperson said that the company was "very disappointed" by Tuesday's decision.

"We have acted in good faith throughout the entire process," they told CNBC.

"The fine ignores our efforts to reach an agreement, and the reality of how news works on our platforms."

This is not the first time that Google has been hit with financial penalties in France.

In January 2019, France's CNIL data protection agency fined the search giant €50m, claiming it had broken GDPR rules on transparency.

In December the same year, Autorité fined Google €150m over mistreatment of advertisers using the company's AdWords service.

The regulator alleged that the company had acted in a seemingly arbitrary manner by randomly suspending advertisers, causing losses to the businesses due to Google's market dominance.