France’s leading online newspaper publishers have called for a new laws to Google and other search engines to pay them for using their published content.
In an interview, Nathalie Collin publisher of Le Nouvel Observateur weekly, said a law should impose a settlement in the long-running dispute with Google, which receives high volumes of advertising revenue from user searches for news contained on media websites.
Talking to Le Figaro, she suggested that media would in exchange for a “fair payment” give up their objection that Google index their news content.
Google France told AFP that it believed such a law “would be harmful to the Internet, Internet users and news websites that benefit from a substantial traffic” sent to them by Google’s search engine.
The search engine giant, which has its European base in Ireland, reported about €41m in revenue in France.
The country’s earlier conservative-led government had cautioned internet giants that it may attack and adopt a new law to tax revenue generated form online advertisements.
In 2011, politicians in France discarded plans for a tax on online advertising revenues, believing the project would cause damages to small local firms when compared to global internet giants.
