Google’s exclusive deal with French publishers suspended until the antitrust authority decides

Author: Mathieu Rosemain

PARIS (Reuters): Google has suspended an initial agreement with some French publishers to pay for news content pending an antitrust decision that could set the tone for discussions about copyright in online news in Europe, two sources close to the matter said.

Under a three-year framework agreement signed by Google and the Alliance de la presse d’information generale (APIG), a lobbying group representing most of France’s major publishers, the U.S. company agreed in January to pay a total of $76 million for 121 publications, according to documents submitted to obtained by Reuters.

This is one of the most high-profile deals under Google’s “News Showcase” program, designed to provide compensation for news snippets used in search results, and the first of its kind in Europe.

However, since then, Google has not signed any individual licensing agreement with the APIG member, and talks are de facto frozen pending a decision by antitrust authorities, sources said.

Only a few publications, such as the newspapers Le Monde, Le Figaro and Liberation, reached individual agreements before the framework agreement was concluded.

“We continue to work with publishers, APIG and the French competition authority on our agreements to finalize and sign more deals,” Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., said in a statement.

APIG had no immediate comment.

It is unclear whether the framework agreement could be scrapped by an antitrust ruling in France expected in the coming weeks, sources said.

The French competition authority did not say when it would publish its decision.

According to sources, the freezing of the transaction was caused by a report presented in February by the French antitrust authorities.

In an unpublished report, antitrust investigators accused Google of failing to follow recommendations from the French competition authority on how to handle copyright negotiations with news publishers, sources who read it told Reuters at the time.

The decision to impose a penalty rests with the management board of the supervisory authority.

One of the key demands issued by the watchdog was that Google conduct “transparent, objective and non-discriminatory” talks in good faith for three months with any news publisher that requested it.

Google has repeatedly said it was in good faith talks with French news publishers. Many French news outlets disagree with this opinion.

“The APIG-Google deal is a perfect example of what not to do,” said Laurent Mauriac, co-president of Spiil, the union of independent online news publishers.

The APIG-Google agreement includes an obligation for each signing news publisher to provide the Google News Showcase product, a provision condemned by non-APIG news publishers.

Google is ready to talk to news publishers outside APIG, Sebastien Missoffe, head of the company’s French branch, told Europe 1 radio last month.

He added that he was open to sharing some of Google’s online traffic data – key elements that determine the value of news content – with an independent third party.

(Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain Editing by Christian Lowe and Mark Potter)