PARIS—Google made binding commitments to negotiate license deals fairly with a broader array of French news publishers, part of a changing approach from the search company in a global debate over how tech companies should pay for news content.
France’s competition authority said Tuesday that a new set of promises that Google made, including a pledge to give publishers estimates of indirect revenue it generates from including news content in its search results, has resolved a dispute that has stretched for more than two years.
The deal comes after the regulator fined Google 500 million euros, equivalent to about $525 million, last year, contending the Alphabet Inc. GOOG 1.63%▲ unit wasn’t negotiating deals with publishers in good faith. A 2019 European Union directive gave publishers new rights to demand payment, called “neighboring rights,” from tech companies like Google for featuring their content. Publishers had complained Google was excluding some of them from talks, leading the competition authority in 2020 to order Google to the table.
As part of Tuesday’s deal, Google has dropped its appeal of last year’s fine, and will allow publishers with which it has already struck deals to renegotiate their licenses with the benefit of the new commitments, the regulator said.
“This deal gives an occasion to correct the competitive landscape which had been unbalanced,” said Benoît Cœuré, head of the French competition authority, in a press conference to announce the deal.
Google said that the deal demonstrates its “willingness to move forward” in paying publishers under the new EU copyright directive. The company says it has struck licensing deals with more than 150 publications in France and more than 650 in Europe under the directive.
The French deal is the latest sign of compromise by Google as it faces an array of antitrust investigations from authorities, particularly in Europe and the U.S., on topics including its market power in internet search and digital advertising.
Separately on Tuesday, Germany’s federal competition regulator said it was opening an investigation into whether Google restricts how its maps can be combined with competing services, adding to a number of investigations into the company in the country. British and EU competition regulators are also investigating elements of Google’s business.
Google has broadly rejected the contention that it violates competition law, though has increasingly sought to settle antitrust cases, including in the past year in France and the U.K.
Regarding the case in Germany, a Google spokeswoman said business users are free to use other mapping services in addition to Google and that the company is prepared to cooperate with the investigation.
Tuesday’s deal in France is the latest step in a debate that has simmered for more than a decade: How much, if anything, should publishers should be paid when their news is available via tech platforms.
Publishers have long argued that news is a big attraction for Google and other tech companies and that its dominance has cut into their own audiences and ad revenue. Therefore, publishers say, they deserve a share of the tech giant's revenue.
The tech companies had traditionally responded that they already send publishers tens of billions of website visits a month and that free linking is the internet’s lifeblood. But with more laws to support publishers being passed—like the EU directive—tech companies are increasingly looking to strike pay deals, too.
Last year, Australia passed a law similar to the EU one requiring tech platforms to strike deals to remunerate news publishers. Google initially opposed Australian law. But it later struck a number of content deals with publishers, including a deal with News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal.
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