Google said on Thursday that it had signed “some individual agreements” on royalty payments with French newspapers and magazines after months of disputes over the distribution of revenue from viewing news in search results.
Among the signatories of the agreement are the main French newspapers Le Monde, Le Figaro and Liberation, as well as magazines such as L’Express, L’Obs and Courrier International.
In a statement, Google France director Sebastien Missoffe said that talks with other media groups were continuing, with the aim of reaching “a framework agreement before the end of the year.”
The announcement came after a Paris appeals court ruled last month that the US giant should continue negotiating with French news publishers a new European law on so-called “related rights” that requires payment for displaying news content. with Internet searches.
The struggling media outlets have long been furious that Google failed to give them a share of the millions it makes from ads displayed alongside news search results.
But Google had refused to comply with digital copyright law, saying that media groups already benefit from millions of visits to their websites.
Financial details were not disclosed, but Missoffe said Google said the payments would be based on criteria including daily publication volumes, monthly Internet traffic and “the publisher’s contribution to general and political information.”
[AFP]
