The French competition authority He imposed a fine against Google of 250 million euros considering that the tech giant had no intention of negotiating with the media for appropriate compensation for the content they publish. The competition authority accuses Google of failing to comply with its commitment made in June 2021, in particular because of four of the seven specified points were not observed then in the agreement between the two parties. This is the fourth time in four years that the agency has fined Google in this case.
These decisions come in the context of the adoption of the French law of July 24, 2019 on related rights, which aims to establish the law “Conditions of a balanced negotiation” between media and digital platforms. The aim was to create a framework for the benefit of the press distribution of compensation for its content, taking into account the major changes that the industry has experienced, particularly due to the increase in digital audiences and the decline in newspaper readers.
According to the French regulator Google Firstly, has not fulfilled its obligations to conduct negotiations with the media «in good faith, based on transparent, objective and non-discriminatory criteria«. Above all, he recalls that since then the company has benefited from the transaction process, which consisted of not questioning the facts accused of it and even proposed a series of corrective measures to respond to some allegations.
The obligation to submit information to the editors was also not respected or to provide the press agencies with the information necessary for a transparent assessment of their remuneration for related rights, nor to take the necessary measures to prevent the negotiations from affecting the economic relations that it maintains with these publishers and the press agencies , affect.
Misuse of AI
At the same time, France also criticizes Google for the use of its AI chatbot Bard (now known as Gemini). of media content to train this AI without warning them or the authority itself. At the same time, he claims that the company has not offered the media a viable solution to oppose the use of its content to train this technology.
Google then linked the use of the content in question by its artificial intelligence service to the display of protected content by not proposing a technical solution that allowed press agencies and publishers to choose not to use their content for Bard, without the display the content is protected by related rights in other Google services. This affects the ability of press agencies and editors to negotiate compensation.
Google accepts the fine, but considers it “disproportionate”
A statement posted on his blog said: Google has indicated it will not challenge the sanction: «We compromised because it is time to turn the tide and, as our numerous agreements with publishers show, we want to focus on long-term approaches to connect internet users with quality content and to work constructively with French publishers«. In any case, the company believes that “the amount of the fine is disproportionate regarding the identified violations«.
Google believes that the competition authority «does not sufficiently take into account the efforts made to address your observations in an environment where it is very difficult to define a course of action when an exact direction cannot be predicted« and explains that «The lack of clear regulatory measures and successive legal actions have made negotiations with publishers more complex and prevented us from calmly considering our future investments in the information sector in France.«. Likewise, the company assures that it has “achieved”Large related rights licensing agreements with 280 French press publishers – covering more than 450 publications – and payments of tens of millions of euros per year«.