After a court decision, Google is giving up for the time being on launching an experiment in France which consists of removing the content of European newspapers from 1% of its users from its search results, it announced to AFP on Thursday .
The Paris commercial court ordered him on Wednesday not to carry out the test, under penalty of a fine of 900,000 euros per day.
The court was urgently seized by the Union of Magazine Press Editors (SEPM), in the context of the thorny issue of rights related to copyright, that is to say the remuneration of newspapers by the web giants in return for the use of their content.
“We take note of the order of the Paris commercial court and suspend the launch of the test in France for the moment”a Google spokesperson told AFP.
Scheduled from Thursday afternoon, the test is maintained in the eight other European countries concerned (Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Poland and Spain).
Rights related to copyright were established for digital platforms by a 2019 European directive. They allow newspapers, magazines or press agencies to be remunerated when their content is reused by digital giants.
In the case of Google, this concerns the titles and extracts of articles, in the results of the search engine and its Google News and Discover services.
Google argues that the test would “measure exactly” to what extent press content brings it traffic, by comparing the behavior of the 1% of users who are deprived of it to that of the other 99 percent.
This is why the search engine said ” surprised “ of the SEPM opposition.
The latter believes on the contrary that this test “is directly contrary to the commitments that the company made in 2022 with the Competition Authority” within the framework of an agreement on neighboring rights.
After the decision of the commercial court, the case must be decided at a later date by a judge in summary proceedings.