Google and France’s competition authority are in a battle over copyright protections for news snippets, with the Autorité de la Concurrence announcing a €250 million fine against Google on Wednesday.
The competition watchdog accused Google of ignoring previous commitments with news publishers and using their content to train its generative AI model Bard/Gemini without notifying them.
Copyright and Competition Issues
In 2019, the EU passed a digital copyright reform extending protections to news headlines and snippets. Google initially tried to avoid the law by turning off Google News in France but was forced to negotiate with publishers by the competition authority.
Despite a $592M fine in 2021, Google eventually settled the dispute, signing agreements with French publishers and agreeing not to appeal the latest fine from the Autorité.
No Appeal
Google accepted the Autorité’s latest findings in exchange for a fast-tracked process and a monetary payment. However, its managing director expressed dissatisfaction with the fine in a blog post.
The enforcement also focused on Google’s use of news content for training its AI models, with the competition authority challenging Google’s failure to notify publishers about this use.
GenAI Training
Google defended its practices citing EU copyright laws but the Autorité argued that Google breached its commitment to inform publishers about the use of their content for AI training.
The incoming EU AI Act will impose transparency requirements on developers, potentially allowing publishers to receive fair compensation for their content used in AI training.
Other Issues
Google was also sanctioned for issues related to negotiating with French news publishers, providing insufficient information, discriminatory practices, and opaque remuneration calculations.
The Autorité criticized Google for setting a minimum threshold for remuneration and failing to update contracts as promised.
