Other EU countries have also challenged Google over news content. (representative)
Paris:
French regulators said on Wednesday they had fined Google 250 million euros ($272 million) for breaking a promise to pay media companies that copied its content online without informing them. uses its materials for its artificial intelligence chatbot.
Google and other online platforms have been accused of making billions from news without sharing the revenue with newsgatherers.
To address this issue, the EU created a form of copyright called “neighboring rights” in 2019 that allows print media to claim compensation for the use of their content.
France has been a test case for these rules, with both Google and Facebook agreeing to pay some French media outlets for articles that appear in web searches after an initial pushback.
Organizations representing French magazines and newspapers, as well as Agence France-Presse (AFP), filed a lawsuit with the French Competition Authority in 2019.
Two years later, regulators fined Google 500 million euros for failing to negotiate in good faith.
In 2022, the agency accepted Google’s commitment to negotiate fairly with news organizations.
Under the deal, the US tech giant must provide news organizations with transparent payment offers within three months of receiving a copyright complaint.
Artificial Intelligence Chatbot
But the regulator said on Wednesday it would impose a new fine on Google for “failing to comply with commitments made in 2022” and not negotiating in “good faith” with news publishers.
The US tech giant also used content from news organizations to train its artificial intelligence platform Bard, now known as Gemini, without notifying them or authorities, the regulator said.
It added that Google had failed to provide publishers and news organizations with technical solutions that would enable them to object to the use of their content, “impeding” their ability to negotiate remuneration.
The regulator said that as part of the settlement process, Google had agreed “not to dispute the facts” and to propose “a series of corrective measures” to address the issues identified by the authority.
Other EU countries have also challenged Google over news content.
Spain’s competition watchdog launched an investigation into Google last year, accusing it of anti-competitive behavior affecting news organizations and publications.
In 2022, Germany’s antitrust regulator shelved an investigation into Google’s News Showcase service after the tech giant made “important changes” to ease competition concerns.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
