France, Antitrust fine to Google of 250 million euros: “Agreements with publishers violated”
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MILAN – L’French antitrust he inflicted on Google a fine of 250 million euros ($272 million) for violating an agreement on payment terms to media companies for reproducing their content online. The French competition authority said in a statement that the fine was imposed for “failing to meet commitments made in 2022” and accused Google of not negotiating in “good faith” with news publishers on the amount to be paid for the use of their contents.
Fair compensation, the Council of State accepts AgCom’s appeal: its regulation remains operational
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As the Authority explains in a note, “this legislative framework aimed to redefine, for the benefit of the players in the printing sector, the distribution of value between these actors and to address the profound changes that have affected the printing sector for several years, in particularly the growth of digital audiences, coinciding with the decline in print circulation, and the fact that a significant share of advertising value is now held by major digital platforms.”
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After imposing provisional measures in the form of injunctions in April 2020, the Authority found that Google had failed to comply with these injunctions and imposed a fine of €500 million, as well as ordering Google to comply, in the form of penalties, with the initial injunctions. Subsequently, ruling on the merits of the case, with the decision of 21 June 2022, the Authority accepted, for a period of five years, renewable once, the commitments proposed by Google to put an end to the concerns expressed regarding competition. In this context, the Authority approved the appointment of Accuracy as a monitoring trustee to monitor and supervise the implementation of Google’s commitments.
With this latest decision, the Authority fined Google for having violated the commitment to collaborate with the monitoring trustee and for not having respected four of the seven commitments undertaken, the purpose of which was to guarantee the following principles: negotiate in good faith, on the basis of transparent, objective and non-discriminatory criteria, within three months (Commitments 1 and 4); providing news agencies and publishers with the information necessary to transparently evaluate their remuneration for negotiated related rights does not impact other economic relationships between Google and news agencies and publishers (Commitment 6).
Regarding “Bard”, the artificial intelligence service launched by Google in July 2023, the Authority found, in particular, that Bard used content from news agencies and publishers to train its foundation model, without notify them or the Authority. Google then linked the use of the contents in question by its artificial intelligence service to the display of protected content, without proposing a technical solution that would allow news agencies and publishers to opt out of the use of their contents by Bard without affecting the display of content protected by related rights on other Google services, thus hindering the ability of news agencies and publishers to negotiate a €250 million fine against Alphabet, Google, Google Ireland and Google France. Since Google committed not to dispute the facts, it was able to benefit from the settlement procedure. Google has also proposed a series of corrective measures to address some violations identified by the Competition Authority.
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