France Slaps Google With A New $593 Million Fine

Search engine giant Google has been fined $593 million by French competition regulators for failing to negotiate air deals with news publishers to use their content.

Google Gets $593 Million Fine For Compliance Issues

France’s Autorité de la concurrence has announced earlier today that search engine giant Google has been fined 500 million Euros ($593 million) after failing to comply with an order given to it in April.

According to the regulator, Google had breached an order given to it in April 2020, where it was asked to negotiate licensing deals with publishers and news agencies for the re-use of their copyright contents.

However, Google had to wait till January this year to agree on a major digital copyright deal with French publishers. Per the terms of the deal, Google said it would negotiate individual licenses with the various members of France’s press alliance. The negotiation would cover related rights and access to a new service dubbed News Showcase.

The move didn’t go down well with the French regulator, which stated that its agreement with Google doesn’t include discussion on remuneration for its current use of content. The regulator further accused Google of restricting the scope of talks with the media by excluding the use of press images.

Google’s Stock Price Rallying Despite France’s Fine

The shares of Google are performing excellently this morning despite the recent fine by the French regulators. At the time of this writing, GOOGL is up by 0.5% since the market opened, and it is now trading around the $2,550 region.

Google’s stock has performed excellently year-to-date. GOOGL began trading above $1,770 at the start of the year and is now up by roughly 30% YTD. According to France 24, the fine imposed on Google is the largest by France’s competition watchdog for a company’s failure to comply with one of its orders.

The regulator had ordered Google to present an offer of remuneration for the use of protected content to French publishers within two months. Failure to do would see Google face fines of up to 900,000 euros per day. Google maintains that it is disappointed with the decisions of the regulator.