A “complex and eventful file, with many episodes” closes, welcomed, Tuesday, June 21, Benoît Cœuré, the president of the Autorité de la concurrence. The institution has issued its third decision in a case started in November 2019, when several unions of press publishers filed a complaint against Google. The authority accepted the commitments of the search engine: these, she explained, create “a more stable and equitable framework” for the negotiation of “neighboring rights”, which remunerate the resumption of extracts of articles by digital platforms.
“We want this decision to be an example, commented Mr. Cœuré. France was the first country to transpose the 2019 European copyright directive [qui a créé le droit voisin]. It is also the country in the world where Google makes the most concessions. »
The authority validated – after having “reinforced” – the commitments made in December 2021 by the American company. Thus, Google has agreed to negotiate the amount of neighboring rights separately, without mixing them with other commercial licenses such as Showcase, a tab of its search engine intended to resume, within a few months, articles Verbatim. The company will discuss with “all press titles”, i.e. around 1,200 online media, and no longer just the 300 newspapers “general information”.
Direct and indirect revenues transmitted to the media
The platform will be required to transmit to the media concerned its direct income (advertisements on search results pages containing links to its articles) and indirect (advertisements on other Google pages then visited by the Internet user). Publishers may request additional information, and a “independent agent” will be responsible for judging whether their transmission is “necessary and technically feasible”.
If the data is subject to business secrecy, the latter may decide not to share it with the media. The agent will have access to the negotiations of the various publishers, and he will be able to rely on experts. Finally, Google has accepted that in the event of a blockage in the negotiations, an international arbitration tribunal will decide.
“The decision of the authority validates the commitments that we have written with all the stakeholders and closes a chapter that has been open for several years”welcomed in a press release Sébastien Missoffe, general manager of Google France.
The group claims to have already, in recent months, signed agreements with 150 French titles (including The world, Le Figaro, Release, The Express…). In March, it entered into an agreement with the Alliance de la presse d’information générale (APIG), which brings together national dailies (Les Echos, Le Parisien-Today in France…) and regional (La Dépeche du Midi, West-France…), as well as the regional weekly press.
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