Google said that he would appeal the “disproportionate” penalty in the amount of half a billion euros (591 million dollars) imposed by the French Antimonopoly Office in July. Reports about it Reuters.
The Office fined the American company for copyright infringement in the Google News service. Then the technological giant could not negotiate with French news publishers about the amount of compensation for the use of content. Google did not fulfill the interim order of the antimonopoly authority, according to which negotiations should have been held at the request of any publisher no later than three months. For this reason, the Company obliged to provide a plan of action within two months on this issue, indicating that otherwise the fines will grow to 900 thousand euros per day.
Commenting on the intention to challenge the decision of the Antimonopoly Statement, the head of Google France Sebastian Missonfea said that the company disagrees with the size of a fine and legal argument.
The decision of the French authorities followed against the background of growing international pressure on online platforms, which forced to share greater profits with news agencies for the right of news reprints, which is the main source of profits for some of them. Google is under the scrutiny of France from the beginning of the summer. The state has achieved consent from the company to make changes to the operation of online advertising services. Then Google fined 220 million euros for the abuse of the market position. At the same time, the authorities stated that they even reduced the amount of the fine.