Google agrees to pay news publishers in France for reuse of content

Google has reached an agreement with an association of French publishers to pay for snippets of their content. This is a result of application of a ‘neighboring right’ for news which was transposed into national law following a pan EU copyright reform agreed back in 2019.

The tech giant had sought to evade paying news publishers for reuse of snippets of content in its news aggregation and search products by no longer displaying them in the country. In April 2020, French competition watchdog (FCA) quashed this attempt to avoid payments deeming that Google’s unilateral withdrawal of snippets was damaging to the press sector.

L’Alliance de la Presse d’Information Generale which represents the interests of around 300 political and general information press titles in France announced the framework agreement today, writing that it sets the terms of negotiation for Google’s reuse of their content.

Google has not confirmed how much money will be distributed to publishers in France solely under the agreed framework over content reuse which is directly linked to neighboring right.