Yet another fine for Google. The French Antitrust has ordered Big G a fine of 500 million euros, approximately $593 million, for failing to give newspaper publishers a fair deal to get their stories featured on services like Google News. "This is the highest penalty" ever imposed by the Competition and Market Authority for failure to comply with one of its decisions, explained the President of the Authority, Isabelle De Silva, and di one of the highest ever imposed by a Member State of European Union.
Going into the details of the decision, in April 2020, after the complaints presented by various newspapers, the French Antitrust had provided Google with indications relating to the ways in which negotiate contracts with publishers, offering them adequate compensation for the use of content on its services. However, the Californian giant, while stipulating individual agreements, would not have complied with the indications. In addition to paying a hefty fine, Google will now have to “submit a remuneration offer” to publishers and news agencies. Otherwise, even heavier penalties will come.
An agreement similar to the French one has also been stipulated with various Italian groups who have signed individual agreements with the Mountain View company for the use of the program News Showcase. It is a sort of showcase, which appears in the search engines, Google News or Google Discover, in which individual publishers, with an upstream fee recognized by Google, can insert their own quality content, to attract readers to their sites possibly showing premium content also to stimulate the subscription of subscriptions.
“We are very disappointed with this decision because we acted in good faith throughout the negotiation period. This fine does not reflect our efforts or the reality of using news content on our platform,” a Google spokesperson replied.
We recall that last May also the Italian Antitrust had imposed a fine on the company, fined more than 100 million euros Alphabet (the parent company) Google and Google Italy for abuse of dominant position on the market in violation of EU regulations. “Through the Android operating system and the Google Play app store, Google holds a dominant position that allows it to control app developers' access to end users. It should be remembered that in Italy about three quarters of smartphones use Android. Furthermore, Google is an operator of absolute importance, on a global level, in the context of the so-called digital economy and possesses a very significant financial strength”, explained the Antitrust.
Five days ago in the US, the attorneys general of 36 states and the District of Columbia launched a new antitrust lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of abusing its dominant position for the fees charged to developers of apps for the Android operating system, and then distributes them through Google Play.
