France’s competition regulator yesterday slapped Google with a 500 million euro (US$592.24 million) fine for failing to negotiate “in good faith” with media companies over the use of their content under EU copyright rules.
It is the “biggest-ever fine” imposed by the EU Competition Authority for a firm’s failure to adhere to one of its rulings, agency president Isabelle de Silva told reporters.
In a ruling published on its Web site, the agency also ordered the US Internet giant to present media publishers with “an offer of remuneration for the current use of their copyrighted content,” or risk paying additional damages of up to 900,000 euros per day.
A Google spokesperson said in a statement that the company was “very disappointed” by the decision.
“We have acted in good faith during the entire negotiation period. This fine does not reflect the efforts put in place, nor the reality of the use of news content on our platform,” the company said. “This decision is mainly about negotiations that took place between May and September 2020. Since then, we have continued to work with publishers and news agencies to find common ground.”
The long-running legal battle has centered on claims that Google has been showing articles, pictures and videos produced by media groups when displaying search results without adequate compensation, despite the seismic shift of advertising revenue online.
In April last year, the French Competition Authority ordered Google to negotiate “in good faith” with media groups after it refused to comply with a new EU law governing digital copyright.
The agency’s so-called “neighboring rights” aim to ensure that news publishers are compensated when their work is shown on Web sites, search engines and social media.
However, in September last year, news publishers, including Agence France-Presse, filed a complaint with regulators, saying that Google was refusing to move forward on paying to display content in Web searches.
In particular, the EU Competition Authority rebuked Google for having failed to “have a specific discussion” with media companies about neighboring rights while negotiating over the launch of its Google Showcase news service, which launched late last year.
News outlets struggling with dwindling print subscriptions have long seethed at Google’s refusal to give them a cut of the millions of euros it makes from ads displayed alongside news search results.
The search giant counters that it encourages millions of people to click through to media sites, and it has also invested heavily in supporting media groups in other ways, including emergency funding during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Google in November last year said that it had signed “some individual agreements” on copyright payments with French newspapers and magazines, including top dailies Le Monde and Le Figaro.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day