Google has been fined €250m (£213m) by French regulators for breaching an agreement to pay media companies for reproducing their content online.
France’s competition watchdog said Wednesday it would fine the U.S. technology company for violations related to intellectual property rules regarding news media publishers. The regulator also cited concerns about Google’s AI service.
The competition authority said Google’s AI-based Bard chatbot – since renamed Gemini – had been trained on content from publishers and news agencies without informing them.
The watchdog said in a statement that the fine was due to “non-compliance with commitments made in 2022” and accused Google of failing to negotiate in “good faith” with news publishers over the amount of their compensation for the use of their content.
Google pledged not to contest the facts in settlement proceedings, the watchdog said, adding that the company had also proposed a series of measures to address certain deficiencies.
France has fought for years to protect the publication rights and revenues of its press and news agencies against what it calls the domination of powerful technology companies that share news content or display news in news outlets. web searches.
Google and other online platforms have been accused of making billions from information without sharing that revenue with those who collect it.
To address this problem, the EU created a form of copyright law called “neighboring rights” that allows print media to demand compensation for the use of their content.
France has been a test for EU rules. In 2019, it was the first EU country to adopt the Directive on Publication Rights for Media Companies and News Agencies, which required large tech platforms to enter into negotiations with publishers seeking remuneration for the use of information content. After initial resistance, Google and Facebook both agreed to pay certain French media for articles displayed in web searches.
The latest fine is linked to a copyright dispute in France over online content. The case was sparked by complaints filed in 2019 by some of the country’s largest news agencies representing French magazines and newspapers, as well as the Agence France-Presse (AFP) news agency.
In 2022, French regulators accepted Google’s commitment to negotiate fairly with news agencies.
Under the terms of the agreement, the technology company must provide media groups with a transparent payment offer within three months of receiving a copyright infringement complaint.
The dispute appears to be resolved in 2022 when Google abandoned its appeal against a first fine of 500 million euros imposed following an investigation carried out by the French Competition Office. Google fought hard against the idea of paying for content and was fined €500 million in 2021 for failing to negotiate in good faith.
In Wednesday’s statement, the watchdog said Google had violated the terms of four of the seven commitments agreed to in the 2022 settlement, including conducting good faith negotiations with publishers and providing transparent information.
The watchdog notably cited Google’s Bard AI chatbot, launching in 2023, which it said was trained on data from unspecified media outlets and news agencies without the company informing them nor the regulator.
“Subsequently, Google linked the use of the affected content by its artificial intelligence service to the display of protected content,” the watchdog said, adding that in doing so, Google hindered the ability of publishers and news agencies to negotiate fair prices.
The fine comes as many publishers, writers and newsrooms seek to limit scraping – or automatic data collection – by AI services of their online content without their consent or fair compensation.
In a statement, Google said: “Google is the first and only platform to have signed a significant number of licensing agreements with 280 French press publishers under the European Copyright Directive. These cover more than 450 of their publications – and pay publishers tens of millions of euros per year. Despite this progress, the French competition authority today fined Google €250 million for the way we conducted these negotiations. They also insisted on changes to the way we negotiate, which we agreed to as part of resolving a long-standing matter.
The statement added: “We agreed because it is time to move on and, as our many agreements with publishers show, we want to focus on the broader goal of sustainable approaches to connecting people with quality content and to work constructively with French publishers. But it is important to note that the fine is not proportionate to the issues raised by the French competition authority. It also does not adequately take into account the efforts we have made to respond and resolve the concerns raised – in an environment where it is very difficult to set a course because we cannot predict which way the wind will blow next.”
