France Is Ordering Google To Pay Websites For Showing Their Content In Search

On Thursday, France¡¯s competition authority has ordered that Google must pay French publishing companies and news agencies for displaying their content or extracts of their content on its news, search and discovery pages.

Reuters

France¡¯s ¡®Autorite de la Concurrence¡¯ said in a statement, ¡°Google¡¯s practices caused a serious and immediate harm to the press sector, while the economic situation of publishers and news agencies is otherwise fragile.¡±

The law that got Google in trouble went into practice last year. Google had stated that it would remove snippets of certain sites altogether unless the publishers allowed Google to do so. However, France¡¯s ¡®Autorite de la Concurrence¡¯ states that this license was given by several press publishers without any kind of remuneration.

The authority believes that Google has taken advantage of its dominant position in the market and imposed unfair trading conditions on news agencies as well as publishers. This forced the publishers to give away their content for free, as they didn¡¯t want to suffer losses in their business if their articles/extracts didn¡¯t populate in Google Search results.

Google vice president of News, Richard Gingras said in a statement, ¡°Since the European copyright law came into force in France last year, we have been engaging with publishers to increase our support and investment in the news. We will comply with the FCA's order while we review it and continue those negotiations.¡±

Reuters

As of now it is an interim ruling, following complaints by the Agence France-Presse (AFP) and other unions representing publishers.

During the negotiations, Google must continue displaying snippets, photos and video according to its current (non-paid) agreements with publishers. Once remuneration has been decided, Google will need to pay publishers starting all the way from October 2019.