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French news sites prevailed in negotiations with Google on “neighboring rights”, a new legal right granted by the European copyright directive of 2019. An agreement between Google and the French internet industry information “establishes a framework within which Google will negotiate individual license agreements” with individual news agencies, according to Google. As part of these offers, news articles in French will be featured in a new Google product called News Showcase.
This is not the result desired by Google. For years, European news agencies have tried to force Google to pay them for the privilege of indexing their articles, and for years Google has flatly refused to do so. When Spain passed a law to force Google to pay to connect to Spanish news agencies in 2014, Google responded by shutting down Google News in Spain.
Google tried to use this same playbook in France after the adoption of the European copyright directive. France was the first country to transpose the European directive into its own laws. In 2019, Google announced that it would stop showing “snippets” of French news articles in search results. Google believed that showing only news headlines, and not short snippets of articles, would bring it into compliance with the new law.
But the decision was reprimanded by the French competition regulator, which considered that the decision was likely an abuse of Google’s monopoly power. Google holds around 90% of the French search market. The Autorité de la concurrence considered that the agreement offered by Google to news sites – let’s index your site for free or we will not do it at all – was an abuse of this market power and contrary to the spirit of the new French law.
French authorities have ordered Google to conduct “good faith negotiations” with the news industry to decide how much Google will pay news sites for their content. And they made it clear that the number had better not be zero.
These negotiations have apparently been successful, although Google’s announcement offers few details on the new framework.
“The remuneration included in these license agreements is based on criteria such as the publisher’s contribution to political and general information, the daily volume of publications, and their monthly Internet traffic,” according to the announcement.
The deal is particularly significant because it offers a model for other European countries that want to force Google to shell out money on their own news sites.
In the past, Google’s harsh tactics have deterred most European countries from trying to force Google to pay. But with the adoption of the European Copyright Directive, European countries have formed a united front against Google, making Google’s resistance much more difficult. Google’s surrender in France will weaken its negotiating position as other European countries pass their own versions of French law and news agencies in other countries line up for their share of Google’s money.
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