France orders Google to pay news companies for showing article extracts

In what is a huge development for news organizations, France’s competition authority has ordered Google to negotiate payments with publishers and news agencies to display extracts on its news, search and discovery pages.

According to reports, the interim ruling comes after France implemented the EU’s “Copyright Directive” law that forced Google to pay publishers to use snippets of articles in searches. Press publishers’ unions and Agence France Presse lodged a complaint back in November 2019, asking for urgent interim measures.

Our colleagues at News Media Europe have produced an overview of the case and some of the finer points of law involved in this decision. You can view a copy of their analysis here.