France fines Google 500 m Euros over a copyright row: What you need to know

Picture couresy : BBC

· Google Alphabet has been fined 500 million Euros by France's competition authority as it failed to negotiate with new publishers over the use of their contents.

· The authority accused Google of not complying with its orders whereas Google told the decision "ignores our efforts to reach an agreement".

· The fine comes at a time when there is a copyright battle between tech firms and news organizations the world over.

· Last year, the French competition authority ordered Google to negotiate deals with news organizations to show extracts of articles in search results, news and other services.

· In the authority's view, Google failed to do this hence it was fined.

· The "neighboring right" law was designed to compensate news publishers and news agencies for the use of their material and Google decided not to show EU publishers' contents in France unless publishers allowed it free of charge.

· News organizations felt this was an abuse of Google's market power and two organizations in France complained it to the Competition Authority.

· Google said, “we are very disappointed with the decision-we have acted in good faith throughout the process". It added it was about to finalize an agreement with AFP including global license and payments for press publications.

· Now the US tech firm must reach a proposal within two months on how to compensate news publishers for the use of their news otherwise it would face an additional fine of 900,000 Euros per day.