PARIS (Reuters) – French antitrust investigators have accused Google Alphabet Inc of failing to comply with state competition authority orders on how to negotiate with copyright publishers, two sources who read said investigators’ report.
In the 93-page report, known as the Statement of Objections, investigators wrote that Google’s non-compliance was exceptionally serious, sources said.
This is due to complaints from French news publishers that Google has failed to have discussions with them in good faith to reach an agreement. The same publishers were not part of the $ 76 million $ 76 million agreement signed between the American company and a group of 121 publications, as reported by Reuters earlier this month.
The deal was seen as a major step forward by both Google and the publishers who signed it, but it left many publications angry.
The French competition authority may impose fines of up to 10% of sales on companies it considers to be in breach of its rules. Google’s annual sales are estimated at about $ 183 billion in 2020.
The investigation report is a key element in the authority’s sanctioning process, but it is up to the supervisory board, led by Isabelle de Silva, to decide whether to issue a sentence.
The largest sanction ever imposed by the French antitrust authority was against iPhone maker Apple Inc. last year, with a fine of 1.1 billion euros ($ 1.34 billion) for anti-competitive behavior against its distribution and retail network. .
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 abide by the law and continue to negotiate with bona fide publishers, as evidenced by the agreements we have reached with publishers in last years. months.”
“We will now examine the statement of objections and work closely with the French competition authority,” he said.
The French report on Google’s negotiating tactics comes at a time when countries around the world are pushing US giants, 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 in connection with a bill that would require arbitration.
According to the two sources, the French investigators say that Google did not comply with the requests from the watchmaker to start negotiations with the publishers within three months and to provide all the data that the watchdog considered necessary for the publishers.
The publisher lobby that signed the agreement with Google, APIG, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The French news agency AFP and another lobby group, SEPM – both have not signed an agreement with Google – have not responded to requests for comment.
Reuters reached its own global agreement with Google in January, under conditions that were not publicly disclosed.
($ 1 = € 0.8228)
Mathieu Rosemain’s report in Paris; Edited by Peter Graff and Matthew Lewis