Google fined €250m in French clash with news outlets

Fine over tech giant's failure to keep its pledge to broker fair agreements with media outlets for publishing links to their content

The move from the French authority marks another escalation in its bid to get Google to deal with the media sector more fairly.

Alphabet’s Google was fined €250m by France’s competition watchdog for failing to keep its pledge to broker fair agreements with media outlets for publishing links to their content, including by plundering press articles to train its AI technology, without informing them.

The move from the French authority marks another escalation in its bid to get Google to deal with the media sector more fairly, after having previously slapped the US tech giant with a €500m penalty for earlier abuses.