Alphabet to pay major fine in France

The French competition authority fined <a class="tvreplink" target="_blank" href="https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=Nasdaq%3AGOOG">Alphabet Inc. Class C (NASDAQ: Demokratie) a $ 593 million fine for allegedly ignoring an order requiring it to negotiate paid deals with news publishers. This puts pressure on Google in a global battle over whether and how tech companies and corporations should pay for news. The French regulator is of the opinion that the company has violated an order from April 2020, which says that Google must negotiate with news publishers and pay a certain sum if it wants to display snippets of the content of said publishers on its platform. The publishers obtained these orders after complaining that Alphabet Inc. was trying to circumvent the new EU copyright directive that France is implementing. Since then, Google has negotiated some paid deals with some news publishers in France, such as Le Figaro and Le Monde. Not all of them, however, most notable is the Agence France-Presse. The head of the competition authority, Isabelle de Silva, said that the hefty fines imposed by the regulator first take into account how serious the alleged violations were. In January, Alphabet Inc. signed a digital copyright deal with France-based news publishers. Part of the deal was for Google to negotiate licenses with members of the French press alliance, who cover related rights and access News Showcase. The French competition authority opposed it, however, claiming that the deal did not include how payment for content covered by "related rights" that is currently in use will be handled. According to AFP, this penalty is the largest that the French competition authority has ever imposed on a provider who has not obeyed its orders. Of course, Google wasn't happy with this decision. A spokesperson told CNBC that they had acted in good faith all along. The spokesman went on to explain that the fine is not aimed at how hard the company has tried to come to an agreement.