France Competition Authority Fines Google $593 Million

French competition authority has struck Google with a $593,000 fine this week after the authority claimed that the company failed to comply with an order to negotiate fair deals with news publishers.

The authority stated that Google breached a 2020 ruling that commanded the tech giant to negotiate “in good faith” licensing deals with other companies for reuse of their copyrighted content.

Google representative said in a statement that “While we are committed to complying with the Copyright Directive and the FCA’s orders, this fine ignores the significant efforts we have made to reach agreements and the reality of how news works on our platforms: Google last year generated less than 5 million Euros in revenue-not-profit from clicks on ads against possible news-related queries in France,”

We want to find a solution and reach definitive agreements but this fine is out of all proportion to the amount of money we make from news and we will be reviewing the decision in detail.”

France invoked new rules made by the European Union as part of sweeping copyright reform in April 2020. At that time, France gave Google three months to negotiate “in good faith” with French news companies, including Agence France-Presse, the global news agency that provides news to all of the country’s government offices.

Google’s spokesperson in a statement noted that Google is the only company that has announced agreements on neighboring rights and is about to finalise an agreement with AFP that includes a global licensing agreement, as well as the remuneration of their neighboring rights for their press publications.

Other countries such as Australia also pushed for better negotiation for Facebook and Google to pay the country’s media companies in order to use their news content, a move that came as thousands of news outlets worldwide were compelled to downsize and shut down because of plummeting ad revenue amid the coronavirus pandemic.