Why France this week fined Google €250M over web news

The French Competition Authority (FCA) on Wednesday fined Google €250 million ($272 million, £214 million) for breaking its promise to figure out a payment plan with French news publishers for using their articles. That's a mere 0.09 percent of Google's €281 billion ($306 billion) revenue and 0.36 percent of its $74 billion …

[Doctor Syntax]

"In 2019, Google said it would not use snippets from French publishers without explicit permission due to the copyright law. But the FCA deemed that refusal to negotiate an abuse of market power."

So the French want to have their brioche and eat it?

[Version 1.0]

Google's just cooking some brioche based on "ingredients" it's collected from France but Google has never paid for the items it's using to generate so much income every year.

[HuBo]

Ah, Google, the Marie-Antoinette of IT ... "meaning well" (do no harm), but out of touch with the plebs whom they leave with nothing but stale bread and water (simplifying a bit), locked up and monetized in a Bastille panopticon. The €250M fine is alright (IMHO) but I think the FCA is looking for a more win-win participative interaction between concerned party-goers (something less monarchic). It's some of that healthy revolutionary massicot coupe-cigare widower Louison spirit I think (and shared gastronomy).

[Doctor Syntax]

As I read it the complaint is that the French want the brioche to be provided to them not just for free but they want to be paid to have them provided.

[HuBo]

Overall (as I understand the group of issues at play) the goal is to prevent anti-competitive behavior by Google where there are competitive local alternatives (though the article is focused more specifically on the News media, and the related fine levied today). For example, when searching for "Rivieres, charente, 16110" (a small town around here), the 3rd result is now the French Mappy, a local competitor to Google Maps (that result is still there, at the top, but can't seem to be easily opened full-page in a new tab anymore). In the short-term then, it "sucks" more for the user (Mappy is good, but not as detailed as G-Maps ), but the expectation is that after tremendous suffering (long-term), there will come a better (more horizontal) distribution of the related wealth brioche, and a more sustainable IT ecosystem (as far as I understand this).

[DS999]

That's insane

They want to FORCE them to provide French news and FORCE them to pay French companies for that news?

[Richard 12]

Re: That's insane

They're a monopoly. That's the sort of thing required to regulate monopolies.

Like, I dunno, if you don't force the company who maintains the water and sewage pipes and treatment plants to maintain them, connect them to new homes and businesses and upgrade capacity, it doesn't take long before nobody has any water and we're all drowning in poo.

Sure, there's a few people with wells, cesspits and septic tanks, but the vast majority of people have no choice whatsoever.

[DS999]

Re: That's insane

Those are agreed upon - the government gives the gas company a franchise over an area where they have a monopoly but have certain obligations. That's very different from a government decreeing something as a monopoly and forcing them to do things (rather than telling them what they are not allowed to do)

[Richard 12]

Re: That's insane

It's exactly the same.

Who ran the first gas network?

Did the Government franchise it out before they even knew such a thing existed?

No. They declared them to be a monopoly when house gas became sufficiently "essential".

New monopolies and duopolies turn up from time to time, and must be recognised and regulated.

[anonymous boring coward]

Re: That's insane

Using (aggregating, training on, etc) is different form pointing to (links from searches).

[captain veg]

Re: That's insane

I don't see anywhere that anyone is forcing Google to provide French news, nor even to pay French companies for French news.

Google is entirely free to collect its own news and publish it in French. So far as I am aware, though, it employs no journalists, so would probably have to get it from the likes of AFP. And pay them. And Google is equally free to not publish any news in French, and to forgo the valuable associated ad revenues.

-A.