PARIS (Reuters) – French antitrust investigators have accused Alphabet Inc’s Google of failing to comply with orders from the state competition authority on how to conduct negotiations with copyright news publishers, said two sources who read the investigators’ report.
In the 93-page report, known as the statement of objections, investigators wrote that Google’s failure to comply was of an exceptionally serious nature, the sources said.
This comes amid complaints from French news publishers that Google has failed to hold good faith talks with them to reach an agreement. The same publishers were not part of the $ 76 million three-year agreement signed between the US company 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 it left many publications furious.
The French competition authority can impose fines of up to 10% of sales on companies it considers to be in breach of its rules. Google’s annual sales totaled about $ 183 billion in 2020.
The investigative report is a key element in the sanctioning process of the authority, but it is up to the supervisory board, led by Isabelle de Silva, to decide on the application of the penalty.
The largest fine ever imposed by the French antitrust authority was against the iPhone maker Apple Inc last year, with a fine of 1.1 billion euros ($ 1.34 billion) for anti-competitive behavior in relation to its distribution network and retail.
A spokeswoman for the competition authority declined to comment.
In response to a request for comment from Reuters, Google said in a statement: “Our priority is to comply with the law and continue to negotiate with publishers in good faith, as evidenced by the agreements we have made with publishers in the past few months.”
“Now we will review the statement of objections and work closely with the French competition authority,” he said.
The French report on Google’s trading tactics comes at a time when countries around the world are pressing internet giants in the United States, such as Google and Facebook Inc, to share more revenue with news publishers. The issue gained international attention this week, when Facebook banned all news from its services in Australia because of a bill that would require arbitration.
According to the two sources, French investigators say that Google did not comply with the watchdog’s requests to start negotiations with publishers within three months and provide all the data that publishers felt the watchdog needed.
The lobby of the publishers who signed the agreement with Google, APIG, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. French news agency AFP and another media lobbying group, SEPM – which have not signed an agreement with Google – have not responded to requests for comment.
Reuters closed its own global deal with Google in January, on terms that were not publicly disclosed.
($ 1 = 0.8228 euro)
Mathieu Rosemain’s report in Paris; Edition by Peter Graff and Matthew Lewis