The French Competition Authority announced on Wednesday March 20 that it had sanctioned Google with a fine of 250 million euros “for non-compliance with certain of its commitments made in June 2022” concerning neighboring rights. This decision was taken after a settlement procedure, “Google having undertaken not to dispute the facts”, clarified the institution.
Google would not have negotiated “in good faith” with press publishers to assess their remuneration under these related rights, according to the Competition Authority. The latter also points to failures in taking the necessary measures so that “the negotiations do not affect other existing economic relations” between them and Google. In addition, the institution noted that the group had used “content from publishers and press agencies” to train its Bard artificial intelligence application, “without notifying the latter or the Authority”.
Rights related to copyright were established for digital platforms in 2019 by a European directive. They allow newspapers, magazines or press agencies to get paid when their content is reused on the Internet by giants like Google, whose search engine displays press extracts in its results pages.
In July 2021, the Competition Authority had already fined Google 500 million euros for not having negotiated “in good faith” with press publishers. It subsequently put an end to the contentious procedure opposing it to the French media by accepting the commitments made in June 2022 by the American giant.
In recent years, Google has signed an agreement with the collective management organization DVP and two framework agreements: one with the Alliance for the general information press (Apig, which brings together nearly 300 national, regional daily press titles and local) and another with the Union of Magazine Press Editors, which represents 80 publishers for more than 400 titles.