Google has signed a deal with news publishers in France to pay them for content appearing as preview snippets in search results, the company announced on Thursday. The deal was signed between Google and the Alliance de la presse d'information générale (APIG), a collective of French publishers. However, the company will negotiate payments with individual publishers. Specifics about the payment structure haven’t been made public yet, but Google said it’ll pay a publisher based on its contribution to political and general information, the daily volume of publications, and its monthly internet traffic. These individual licensing agreements will cover publishers’ neighbouring rights, and allow for participation in News Showcase, a new licensing program recently launched by Google, the company said. News Showcase is a curated news product currently offered in Germany and Brazil, with expansion plans in more countries. Google had presented the News Showcase as a feature that would give publishers (which have partnered with Google) more control over which stories they wish to show to readers, and how to present them. Stories will appear initially in the form of story panels on the Google News app on Android, and later on iOS. In April 2020, the French competition authority, the Authorité de la Concurrence, had ruled that Google would have to negotiate with news publishers to remunerate them for article snippets the company shows in search results. The ruling was based on a suit filed by French publishers after the country’s implementation of the EU’s Copyright Directive, which specifically targeted…
