French Competition Authority Fines Google Nearly $600 Million For Failing To Negotiate A Nonsensical Deal With Publishers 'In Good Faith'

from the ma-foi dept

France has long been in the vanguard of passing bad copyright laws. For example, it rushed to bring in probably the worst implementation of the EU Copyright Directive's upload filters. It's also keen on forcing Google to pay French press publishers for sending traffic to them when it displays clickable snippets of their news stories for free. Last year, the French Competition Authority said Google had no choice in the matter, and ordered the company to negotiate with French news organizations and come up with a deal that pays them to display even short excerpts. A year on, it seems that the French Competition Authority is not happy with the way that Google has responded:

At the end of an in-depth investigation, the Autorité found that Google had not complied with several injunctions issued in April 2020. First of all, Google's negotiations with press publishers and agencies cannot be regarded as having been conducted in good faith, while Google imposed that the discussions necessarily take place within the framework of a new partnership, called Publisher Curated News, which included a new service called Showcase. In doing so, Google refused, as it has been asked on several occasions, to have a specific discussion on the remuneration due for current uses of content protected by related rights.

And to show how really, really cross it is, the Competition Authority has whacked Google with an immediate 500 million euro fine (nearly $600 million). Somehow the French government body believes the following about that ridiculous amount:

[It] takes into account the exceptional seriousness of the infringements observed and how Google's behaviour has led to further delay the proper implementation of the law on related rights, which aimed to better take into account the value of content from press publishers and agencies included on the platforms. The Autorité will be extremely vigilant on the proper application of its decision, as non-execution can now lead to periodic penalty payment.

That periodic penalty is an equally salty 900,000 euros -- around $1 million -- per day of "delay". These figures are truly extraordinary, not least because a rational observer can see that, if anything, it is the French press that ought to be paying Google for the massive amount of free advertising it receives, not the other way around. It's all further proof that France has been driven mad by its hatred of big US Internet companies, and its equally weird love of maximalist copyright monopolies.

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Filed Under: competition, fines, france, google tax, journalism, link tax, news, news bargaining code, news publishers, search, sending traffic
Companies: google

Canadian Publishing Group Says France Has The Right Idea, Presses For Its Own Google Tax

from the dividing-by-almost-zero dept

Canada is more than just a calmer, more apologetic version of the United States. It's its own thing. But, more accurately, it's a Britain + France thing. While Canada shares a common border with us, it's still more Europe than US of A.

Every so often we're reminded of its ties with the other side of the pond. This is one of those times.

French regulators recently decided Google owed French news sites for all the traffic it sends to them. It mandated "negotiations" between Google and French newspapers, but insisted the negotiations begin with Google getting out its wallet.

It appears Canadian lobbyists agree with France: Google owes them money.

A Canadian news industry advocacy group says that Canada would do well to follow France’s example in forcing internet search giant Google Inc. to pay news publishers for their content.

I guess this depends on how you define "do well." This could backfire severely, resulting in no new revenue streams and fewer site visitors. Just ask Spain. That's not "doing well." If this means the group thinks it's advisable to follow France's example, it's also wrong. But that's the direction journalists are being steered by their advocates.

News Media Canada chief executive John Hinds said Thursday that the federal government will need to take a leadership role if the power dynamic between Google and publishers is to be changed.

This isn't the first time Canadian journalists have demanded tech companies pay them for the traffic they send them. Three years ago, a Google tax was pitched to the Canadian government -- one that included Facebook and Netflix in a proposal to tax companies who helped bring Canadian content to site users around the world.

Things are tough all over, thanks to a radical shift in, well… everything… since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. Hinds somehow believes an advertising giant will provide for everyone during a time when everyone's advertising revenues are down.

Hinds said the collapse of advertising rates in the face of the COVID-10 global pandemic, at a time when people are reading news sites at higher rates than ever, highlights the problem.

“I think it’s a fundamental thing: We need to be paid for our content. We need to be compensated,” Hinds said.

Fair enough. Let your readers do that. If they're not interested, it's really not up to a bunch of other companies located elsewhere in the world to make up the perceived difference. Everything sucks everywhere at the moment. Wringing a few bucks out of Google isn't going to reverse anyone's fortunes. And the more newspapers that convince governments Google should pay for sending them traffic, the less they'll all be making individually.

A Google tax isn't a revenue stream. It's not even a trickle. Here's Nate Hoffelder's estimate of how Google's "billions" in profit would actually pay out for rent-seeking newspapers:

Google is making under 4 cents per search, and turning a profit of around a half a cent per search.

Of course, that is an average across all of Google's search results, and it includes search terms and even whole verticals which are not monetized (Google News, for example). And that is also a global average and not based on EU revenues, so it is not 100% applicable. (And those calculations are based on a bunch of unsupported assumptions.)

Leaving those caveats aside, the point that matters is that news publishers want Google to pay for the use of their links and snippets. This means that Google would need to take that 3.7 cents and divide it between all of the relevant links returned with each click of the search button (after taking a cut for itself).]

Efforts like this are counterproductive. They're unlikely to reverse the fortunes of failing news concerns and far more likely to convince US tech companies to avoid providing specific services for certain countries. If Canadian publishers want what France has, they're only going to end up splitting the disappointment.

Filed Under: aggregators, canada, france, google news, google tax, john hinds, news aggregators, news publishers, snippets, traffic
Companies: news media canada