The French Revolution this time was driven by Agence France-Presse.
Alphabet Inc, a Google-owned company, will pay for all its news content to Agence France-Presse (AFP) as part of a 5-year partnership agreement that was announced on Wednesday, November 17th.
It marks one of the largest licensing agreements reached by the tech giant under new French law.
Tracing previous stories, news organizations have complained for years about tech companies like Google and Facebook that have used search results stories or other features for free, causing the organization to lose their advertising revenue.
As a result of constant media lobbying and public pressure, France and Australia have introduced new laws that give publishers a collective multi-billion dollar worldwide licensing advantage.
The agreement follows the enactment of a law on copyright to create ‘neighboring rights’ by France, which requires large technology companies to negotiate with news publishers who want licensing fees in advance.
So far, Google has not disclosed the financial terms of the agreement, but has confirmed that the agreement lasts for 5 years.
According to sources from Reuters, earlier this year Google had agreed to pay US $ 76 million or RM317.57 million over 3 years to 121 French news publishers excluding AFP. However, the deal stalled due to pending the outcome of antitrust proceedings in which Google has been accused of failing to negotiate transparently with several French competition regulators.
Meanwhile, Google's managing director in France, Sebastien Missoffe, said the agreement with AFP showed that the company was ready to seek mutual understanding with publishers.
However, the deal did not lead AFP to join Google's News Showcase that promotes content from more than 1,000 publishers who have agreed to license content for a fee that includes the world's leading companies such as Reuters and the Wall Street Journal.
In addition, Facebook last month signed a neighboring rights agreement with a French alliance including dozens of publishers such as Le Figaro.
