French regulators have slapped Google with a €250 million fine for failing to comply with previous commitments on payments to media companies.
The fine relates to a long-running dispute over payments to publishers for displaying their content in search results, following the introduction of a copyright law in 2019.
In 2020, France’s competition authority, the Autorité de la Concurrence, issued a series of injunctions against the company, but the following year fined it €500 million for failing to comply. Google responded by proposing a series of commitments, which were accepted by the authority, with Accuracy appointed as a monitoring trustee to monitor and oversee their implementation.
Now, though, the ADLC has ruled that Google has failed to comply with four of the seven commitments. Most notably, it’s been found to have failed to negotiate in good faith, based on transparent, objective and non-discriminatory criteria, within the three-month period specified.
It didn’t, says the authority, provide press agencies and publishers with the information they needed to transparently assess the payments due; nor did it take the necessary measures to make sure that negotiations didn’t affect any other economic dealings between Google and press agencies and publishers.
The use of news content to train AIs has become a contentious one of late, with the New York Times suing OpenAI and Microsoft over the issue late last year. And the French authority says it has particular concerns over Google Bard—now called Gemini—the AI launched by the company last summer.
“The Autorité found in particular that Bard had used content from press agencies and publishers to train its foundation model, without notifying either them or the Autorité,” the authority has ruled.
And, it said, the company has failed to suggest a technical solution to allow press agencies and publishers to opt out of the use of their content by the AI, without affecting the display of content on other Google services. This, it says, hampers the ability of press agencies and publishers to negotiate payment.
The question of whether the use of press publications as part of an AI service qualifies for protection under related rights regulations hasn’t yet been settled—but the authority says it’s concluded that Google breached one of its commitments by failing to inform publishers that Bard was using their content.
Google has agreed not to contest the findings, and has offered a series of measures designed to address the breaches. However, in a blog post, Sulina Connal, managing director for news and publishing partnerships, said the company isn’t happy.
“We have compromised because it is time to turn the page and, as our many agreements with publishers prove, we want to focus on sustainable approaches in order to connect users with quality content and work constructively with French publishers, she wrote.
“But it is also important to note that we consider the amount of the fine to be disproportionate to the shortcomings identified by the ADLC. It does not take sufficient account of the efforts we have made to respond to the various remarks—in an environment where it is very complicated to define a course of action when one cannot anticipate a precise direction.”
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