Google fined €250 million in France over dispute with news publishers

France’s competition watchdog fined Google 250 million euros ($271.7 million), saying the search giant breached some commitments it made to negotiate license deals with an array of news publishers in the country.

The Alphabet unit has for years been in the cross hairs of the French competition authority over its use of news publishers’ content in search results and, in 2022, Google made binding commitments to negotiate license deals fairly, including a pledge to give publishers estimates of indirect revenue it generates when including news content in its search results.

The French competition authority said Wednesday that Google had breached commitments to negotiate in good faith, provide news publishers with information to transparently assess their remuneration for related rights, and take the measures to ensure that negotiations didn’t affect economic relationships between Google and news publishers.

Google also breached a commitment to cooperate with a trustee monitoring the implementation of its pledges, the authority said.