PARIS (Reuters) – French antitrust investigators have accused Alphabet Inc’s Google of failing to comply with state competition authorities ‘orders to negotiate with copyright publishers, two sources who read the investigators’ report said.
In the 93-page report, known as a statement of objections, the investigators wrote that Google’s failure was of an extremely serious nature, the sources said.
It comes amid complaints by French news publishers that Google has not held talks with them in good faith to find a deal. The same publishers are not part of the $ 76 million three-year deal signed between the US firm and a group of 121 publications, as Reuters reported earlier this month.
The deal was presented as a major step forward by both Google and the publishers who signed it, but left many publications furious.
The French competition authority can impose fines of up to 10% of sales on businesses that it says violate its rules. Google’s annual sales in 2020 amounted to approximately $ 183 billion.
The investigation report is a key element in the government’s sanctions process, but it is the watchdog’s advice, led by Isabelle de Silva, to decide whether to impose a penalty.
The biggest fine the French antitrust authority has ever imposed was last year against iPhone maker Apple Inc, with a fine of 1.1 billion euros ($ 1.34 billion) for anticompetitive conduct in its distribution and retail network. .
A spokesman for the competition authority declined to comment.
In response to a Reuters request for comment, Google said in a statement: “Our priority is to comply with the law and to continue to negotiate in good faith with publishers, as evidenced by the agreements we have over the past few years with publishers. ”months.”
“We will now review the statement of objections and work closely with the French competition authority,” he said.
The French report on Google’s negotiation tactics comes at a time when countries around the world are pushing US internet giants like Google and Facebook Inc. to share more revenue with news publishers. The issue received international attention this week when Facebook banned all news from its services in Australia about a draft law there that would require arbitration.
According to the two sources, the French investigators said that Google did not comply with the watchdog’s requests to start negotiating with the publishers within a three-month deadline, and to provide all information that the watchdog believed publishers needed. supply.
The lobby of the publishers who signed the agreement with Google, APIG, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The French news agency AFP, and another media lobby group, SEPM – both of which did not sign an agreement with Google, did not respond to requests for comment.
Reuters reached its own global agreement with Google in January on terms that were not made public.
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Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain in Paris; Edited by Peter Graff and Matthew Lewis