(Updated with no reaction from Google)
The French Competition Authority announced on Wednesday that it had imposed a sanction of 250 million euros on Alphabet, parent company of Google GOOGL.O, Google Ireland and Google France for not having respected certain commitments made obligatory by a decision in June 2022 in the so-called “neighboring rights” file.
This is the fourth decision rendered by the Competition Authority in this matter in the space of four years.
“These decisions are part of a context marked by the adoption of the law of July 24, 2019 on related rights (transposing the European directive on copyright and related rights of April 17, 2019) with the objective of in place the conditions for balanced negotiation between publishers, press agencies and digital platforms,” she said in a press release.
The dispute arose from a complaint which had been filed in France by several media outlets, including Agence France Presse (AFP), against the conditions of use of their content by Google.
The conflict seemed to have been resolved on June 21, 2022 when Google abandoned its appeal against an initial fine of 500 million euros imposed by the Competition Authority, and made a series of commitments with a view to fairly remunerating the parties concerned.
But in its press release published Wednesday, the Competition Authority underlines that the American company has not respected four of the seven commitments aimed at “conducting negotiations in good faith, on the basis of transparent, objective and non-discriminatory criteria in a period of three months” or even to “transmit to publishers or press agencies the information necessary for the transparent evaluation of their remuneration under related rights”.
Google did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters.
(Written by Tangi Salaün, edited by Kate Entringer and Blandine Hénault)