France Wants Google To Pay For Linking News
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French President Francois Hollande warned Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Monday that his government could impose a new legislation next year that would effectively force Google’s search engine to pay for the ‘right’ to cite French news articles.
French President Francois Hollande warned Google CEO Eric Schmidt on Monday that his government could impose a new legislation next year that would effectively force Google’s search engine to pay for the ‘right’ to cite French news articles.
According to a report by The Independent, Hollande had met Schmidt after French newspaper publishers had complained that Google was earning over 1.2 billion euros a year from online advertising in France alone – by linking to French-written articles on its search engine for breaking news.
The French newspaper publishers also alleged that Google was charging higher advertising rates than themselves, but none of the benefits had went to the sites that were doing the “real work”.
On their part, Google insists that without their links, French news sites would be deprived of billions of “hits” a year.
During a dialogue with Schmidt at the Elysée presidential palace, Hollande laid down an ultimatum for Google to reach a financial agreement with French publishers by the end of the year, or risk having legislations imposed onto the company.
[quote]”Dialogue and negotiations between partners appear to be the best option but, if that is necessary a law could be passed on this matter,” Hollande reportedly told Schmidt, according to an Elysée statement released after the meeting.[/quote]However, the French president’s argument has been rejected by not only Google, but by internet-only news sites in France such as Rue 89 and Mediapart, who say that a tax on Google would simply reinforce, or preserve the domination of the “traditional” news media.
In a position paper sent earlier this month to several French government ministers, as cited by the Wall Street Journal, Google said that it “cannot accept” the creation of a ‘right to cite’ as that would “threaten its own existence”.
[quote]It’s not a secret that we think a law like the ones proposed in France and Germany would be very damaging to the Internet. We have said so publicly for three years,” Google said in an emailed statement earlier this month.[/quote]“As a consequence, we would be forced to no longer link to French sites,” the company added.
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Google has long resisted the idea of sharing its advertising revenue with content providers. Some analysts also see the proposed new law as a form of financial support to newspapers, whose own advertising revenues have been under threat from consumer shifts from print to online.
Currently, Germany is also drafting a legislation that would force search engines to pay commissions to German media websites, while Brazil’s National Association of Newspapers stopped using search engine aggregator Google News earlier this month, for refusing to pay for content.
