Google hit with 250-mn-euro French fine in news copyright fight

tech.hindustantimes.com:

French regulators said Wednesday they were fining Google 250 million euros ($272 million) for breaching commitments on paying media companies for reproducing their content online and for using their material for its AI chatbot without telling them.

Google had made commitments in 2022 to negotiate fairly with French news organisations, a year after the Competition Authority hit the US tech giant with a 500-million-euro fine over the long-running dispute.

Organisations representing French magazines and newspapers -- as well as Agence France-Presse (AFP) -- had lodged a case with the regulator in 2019.

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Under its commitments, the US tech giant has to provide news groups with a transparent offer of payment within three months of receiving a copyright complaint.

But the regulator said Wednesday it was imposing the new fine on Google for "failing to respect" four of the seven commitments made in 2022 and not negotiating in "good faith" with news publishers.

The US tech giant also used content from press agencies to train its artificial intelligence platform -- Bard (now known as Gemini) -- without notifying them or the authority, the regulator said.

Google failed to provide publishers and news agencies a technical solution allowing them to object to the use of their content, "hindering" their ability to negotiate remuneration, it added.

The watchdog said Google had agreed to "not dispute the facts" as part of the settlement process and proposed "a series of corrective measures" in response to the failings identified by the authority.

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In a statement, Google said the fine was disproportionate and did not "sufficiently take into account the efforts we have made to answer and resolve the concerns raised -- in an environment where it's very hard to set a course because we can't