France's authorities do not want to put up with the fact that major tech corporations do not meet their demands. Thus, as a preventive measure, the government uses penalty payments, and rather heavy ones.
Recently, Google has been hit by the French antitrust regulator once again. The watchdog has slapped an impressive €500 million fine on the company for failing to comply with the orders issued in April 2020. According to the regulator, the US search giant was unable to negotiate "in good faith" with news organisations and other publishers and compensate them for the use of their content protected by neighboring rights. Interestingly, France’s competition authority could have proposed a smaller fine if the company had not ignored the French government’s efforts to reach an agreement.
“When the regulator imposes obligations for a company, it must comply scrupulously, in both the spirit and letter. In this instance, this was unfortunately not the case," Isabelle de Silva, the head of France's antitrust watchdog, said.
Notably, just a month ago, Google was fined €220 million for favouring its own technologies in online advertising. The regulator said that the tech group had abused its dominant position in search engine services. Besides, the company agreed to pay €76 million over the next three years to a group of French news publishers as compensation for the use of their material on its websites.
