Google has quietly dropped its call to resist antitrust fine of half a billion euros was hit last summer for major violations in the way it negotiates to pay local news publishers for displaying copyrighted content.
A major reform to the European Union’s rules on digital copyright has been agree to come back in 2019 – and was translated into French law shortly afterwards – created a new right that included the reuse of news content.
Google responded to the law change in France by first finding a way to evade payments by stopping showing such snippets in products like their news aggregator. But the country’s antitrust watchdog has stepped in Year 2020 – suspect that Google’s unilateral action constitutes an abuse of market power and require Google to pay publishers to reuse content.
Google then seeks to cut deals with French publishers but this quickly led to complaints about how it was negotiating – such as by withholding important information and trying to force publishers to include proximity rights payments in licensing terms for a News Showcase product that Google had devised – so Google’s action attracted other regulatory intervention; and in July 2021a $592 million fine for abusive bargaining practices.
The tech giant called the fine “incommensurate“When it filed an appeal Autorité de la Consentsanction last fall.
However, it has now agreed to withdraw the appeal. The development comes as the French competition regulator said today that it accepts the behavioral commitments made by Google for the first time back. December as it seeks to settle the antitrust lawsuit – this indicates that Google’s waiver of the appeal is part of the full settlement announced today.
“Google is committed to withdrawing its appeal against the decision not to comply with the orders. Therefore, the fine of 500 million euros issued by Autorité on 12 July 2021 will become final.” L’Autorité wrote in a Press Release [translated from French with machine translation].
Its own blog post Regarding the settlement, Google did not mention withdrawing the appeal – instead, it rotated the accepted commitments as drawing a line in a questionable chapter for its business.
“Nice weather Autorité de la Consent accepted our commitments, guiding these negotiations [over reuse of news publishers’ content] will be underway in the coming years,” wrote Sébastien Missoffe, CEO and Vice President of Google France. “An independent trustee will be appointed and will be responsible for overseeing the proper implementation of the commitments. These commitments represent our desire to work towards and remunerate publishers and press agencies for their neighborhood rights. ”
What exactly did Google agree to? The pledges that have been accepted by the French regulator are now enhanced versions of those originally made by Google late last year.
The regulator said Google has committed to conducting good faith negotiations with news publishers who require negotiations over remuneration for their content under the law – applying “transparency criteria”. , objective and non-discriminatory”.
This includes agreeing to promptly deliver critical information to publishers (e.g., their protected content impressions and click-through rates on Google Search, Google News, and Google Discover). ; plus data regarding Google’s revenue in France); and agree to pass on to an independent agent any relevant additional information that the publisher may request (a structure that appears to address concerns about Google’s confidential information being shared too directly). next).
The framework commits the tech giant to make a compensation proposal within three months of starting negotiations with a publisher.
If there is a disagreement, the framework allows the arbitral tribunal to determine how much Google should pay.
Google has expressly agreed to keep terms separate from publishers to license legally protected content – therefore, do not seek to include this type of content licensing in the terms of any product. any other Google media product (such as the News cart), as they have tried before.
L’Autorité also noted that Google has agreed to expand the scope of its commitments to publishers it had previously sought to exclude, to include news outlets.
Google’s blog post talks about the number of deals it has signed with French publishers in the interim – with the tech giant writing that it has “agreements with more than 150 press publications in France”.
However, as the regulator points out, the terms of the agreed-upon bargaining framework mean that publishers are not bound to any contracts they have previously entered into with Google – and instead, are free to renegotiate terms with the benefit of the new framework if they so wish. desired (although existing contracts will apply until replaced by any new transactions).
Google has also pledged not to take retaliatory measures against publishers – that the negotiations do not affect the indexing, classification, or presentation of protected content; and does not affect other economic relationships that may exist between Google and newspaper publishers and news agencies, according to L’Autorité.
The commitments are now mandatory for a period of five years – with the possibility of extension for another five years, at the discretion of the regulator.
An approved independent agent will oversee Google’s application and oversee its negotiations with publishers. This (unnamed) representative will take an active role in resolving potential disputes by providing comments and suggestions to L’Autorité – to which Google has agreed to be bound (although publishers are still free to pursue alternative legal means to resolve disputes if they so desire).
Commenting in a statement, Benoît Cœuré, president of L’Autorité, said the regulator welcomed – “on a meritorious basis” – the commitments Google made following its intervention and sanction, adding:
“The combination of these different means of action can now create an environment that offers greater stability and assurance for publishers and news organizations. For the first time in Europe, the commitments made by Google provide a dynamic framework for negotiating and sharing the information needed for a transparent assessment of the remuneration of directly and indirectly related rights. This framework will improve evaluation methods and enable Google to convey the necessary information to them. ”
News reuse doesn’t just apply to Google’s French operations; EU copyright reform will be adopted across the bloc once all Member States have translated this into national law – thus the framework agreed upon in France is likely to form the template for Other negotiations with regional news publishers. (According to Google’s blog, the company has signed deals with more than 650 publications to date – though, it may have to redo the terms based on what’s agreed in France if publishers elsewhere decide they want a better deal.)
Outside of the EU, Google’s licensing negotiations with publishers in Australia are also regulated after the country passed its own news code negotiation law. early last year.
While the UK seems to also consider similar legislation to support publishers as it works on a reboot of domestic competition rules that cover tech giants. Although there is no short-term prospect of change after the government delay move the law forward.
However, the UK’s competition watchdog said it would make full use of its existing powers – which in recent years has included get a bunch of commits from Google on how it will remove cookie tracking support in Chrome and install adtech instead.
Meanwhile, the German competition watchdog has been investigating Google’s News Showcase licensing product ever since last summer – the following claims that the planned integration into the general search function of Google appear to be competing services that are self-prioritized and/or unfairly disadvantaged by third parties.
That German FCO poll is still ongoing. But in January Google has offered to limit how News Showcase ‘storyboards’ will appear in market search results – as soon as the country’s competition watchdog determines it may apply special abuse controls to Google.
The short story of all these antitrust interventions is that Big Tech’s T&Cs are slowly being reshaped by forces beyond their control. And – notably – it international regulatory body is running at the vanguard of this executed reboot.
