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Tag: Autorité de la concurrence

  • France Fines Google Record $593M Over News Copyright Battle

    France Fines Google Record $593M Over News Copyright Battle

    The French Competition Authority has fined Google a record $593 million (500 million euros) for not negotiating in good faith with news publishers.

    Google has a long history of not paying news publishers for the content it uses. The company has maintained that publishers receive far more benefit than it does from the arrangement, a point that many news publishers and regulators have increasingly pushed back against. Google has been changing its stance, but that hasn’t been enough to stop regulatory scrutiny.

    According to NBC News, France’s Autorité de la concurrence has now fined Google a whopping $593 million for not abiding by an April 2020 ruling ordering the company to negotiate “in good faith” with news publishers. The Authority took issue with Google not discussing remuneration for content covered by “neighboring rights,” as well as for not including press image usage.

    To make matters even worse for the search giant, the Authority has ordered Google to come up with a remuneration offer for publishers’ protected content within two months. Should the company fail to do so, it will be fined up to 900,000 euros a day.

    The decision follows another fine of $267 million a month ago by the Authority over Google favoring its own advertising services over competitors’.

  • Apple Fined Record Amount by France Over Price-Fixing

    Apple Fined Record Amount by France Over Price-Fixing

    France’s competition authority, Autorité de la concurrence has fined Apple a record €1,1 billion ($1.23 billion) for price-fixing.

    At the heart of the issue is Apple’s practice of requiring distributors to sell Apple’s products for the same price as Apple itself, giving little room for companies to offer promotions or specials. One of Apple’s premier French resellers, eBizcuss, eventually shut down its operations in France, citing unfair competition.

    According to the Autorité de la concurrence report, “after receiving a complaint in 2012 from eBizcuss, a distributor of specialised high-end Apple products (Apple Premium Reseller, APR), the Autorité de la concurrence fined Apple €1,1 billion, as well as wholesalers Tech Data and Ingram Micro €76,1 million and €62,9 million respectively.”

    Tech Data and Ingram Micro’s fines were a result of their participation in Apple’s price-fixing efforts.

    The agency offered a detailed explanation for its actions: “First, Apple and its two wholesalers agreed not to compete and prevent distributors from competing with each other, thereby sterilizing the wholesale market for Apple products. Secondly, so-called Premium distributors could not safely carry out promotions or lower prices, which led to an alignment of retail prices between Apple’s integrated distributors and independent Premium distributors. Finally, Apple has abused the economic dependence of these Premium distributors on it, by subjecting them to unfair and unfavorable commercial conditions compared to its network of integrated distributors. Given the strong impact of these practices on competition in the distribution of Apple products via Apple premium resellers, the Autorité has imposed the highest penalty ever pronounced in a case (€1.24 billion).”

    France’s decision could ultimately have profound impacts on how Apple—as well as other companies—sells products, and crack open the door to more varied pricing.

  • France Fines Google $166 Million Over Search Ads

    France Fines Google $166 Million Over Search Ads

    TechCrunch is reporting that France has levied a $166 million fine against Google over abusing its online advertising dominance.

    France’s competition watchdog, Autorité de la concurrence, announced the fine last week following an investigation dating back several years. The fine is based on advertising rules that were “opaque and difficult to understand” and that Google was applying in “an unfair and random manner.”

    The case was brought to the competition authority’s attention over four years ago when Google closed the Google Ads account of a company called Gibmedia without any notice. Google told TechCrunch GibMedia’s account had been closed to protect consumers, as it was “running ads for websites that deceived people into paying for services on unclear billing terms.”

    Autorité de la concurrence pointed out, however, that Google is not applying that rationale uniformly and currently has other sites selling similar services.

    Google has vowed to fight the decision. In the meantime, in order to comply with the Autorité de la concurrence’s ruling, Google must clarify its rules and procedures, set up a warning system to alert advertisers and help them avoid account suspensions and “organize mandatory annual training for Google Ads support staff.”