Milestone deal! Google to pay German media for online content

Google said on Thursday it had agreed a "milestone" deal with a number of German media outlets to pay for the use of their content online. The agreement is the first with publishers in Germany after the country legislated on so-called neighbouring rights, developed from an EU copyright directive and which have been at the heart of multiple disputes between internet giants and the media over payment for the use of online news and other content.

German newspapers Zeit, Handelsblatt and Tagesspiegel, as well as weekly magazines such as Spiegel, WirtschaftsWoche and Manager Magazin, among others, are party to the deal with the American tech company. "For both us and our partners, these copyright agreements represent a milestone in strengthening successful partnerships," Google said in a blog post, adding that it was pursuing discussions with other publishers.

"Platforms like Google are important partners for us, not least because they bring a lot of traffic to our websites and we can commercially leverage this reach," said Rainer Esser, the managing director of the publishing group behind German weekly newspaper Zeit.

The two sides had found a "mutually beneficial solution", managing director of Spiegel Stefan Ottlitz said in a statement.

Details as to the size of the deal were not given.

Global tech giants -- mostly American -- have run into a wide range of disputes with Brussels and EU member states over taxation, abuse of their dominant market power, privacy issues and for making money from journalistic content without sharing the revenue.

To tackle this, the EU directive created the form of copyright called neighbouring rights that would allow outlets to demand compensation for use of their content.

German lawmakers implemented the directive in the country in June and the agreement follows similar deals in other EU countries and with other tech 

Google Will Pay AFP for Its News in First Deal After French Fine

(Bloomberg) Google has agreed to pay news wire Agence France-Presse for the use of its content, its first deal following a fine from the French regulator over its approach to negotiating compensation for news organizations.

The Alphabet Inc. division and AFP struck the accord after months of negotiations, the companies said in a statement Wednesday. The amount wasn’t disclosed. The news agency reported that the deal would cover content in all European Union countries for five years.

Web platforms like Google and Facebook have long been reluctant to pay media for using content such as news article extracts in their user feeds. The EU’s so-called neighboring rights law passed in 2019 compelled them to strike payment agreements with the region’s publishers.

Google and a group of French press titles excluding AFP struck an initial agreement in January. However, the French competition authority fined Google 500 million euros ($593 million) in July for having failed to negotiate “in good faith” with news outlets. Google appealed the fine.

“This agreement with Agence France-Presse demonstrates our willingness to find common ground with publishers and press agencies in France on the topic of neighboring rights,” Sébastien Missoffe, managing director of Google France, said in the statement.