Google has announced that it has reached an agreement with more than 300 media outlets in six European Union countries to pay for their content while announcing that it will make the same offer to other countries.

Publishers are among the harshest critics of Google and have long called on governments to regulate the payment of fees for media content published on digital platforms.

Australia set the payment last year and a similar law went into effect in Canada in April,

euronews

reports .

Sulina Connal, director of Google's media department, announced that they had agreed to pay for content with about three hundred media companies in the group of European Union countries.

"The agreements we have reached so far cover more than 300 editions of national, local and specialized newspapers in Germany, Hungary, France, Austria, the Netherlands and Ireland, and there is much ongoing discussion," she wrote.

Connal has not specified how much they will pay, but German media make up two-thirds of the group and include the weekly Der Spiegel and Die Zeit and the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

The head of Google also announced a new tool, which will offer deals to other publishers in the EU in the coming months, starting with Germany and Hungary.

The tool will offer publishers an extended news review agreement that Google will allow.

The EU passed a copyright directive three years ago, requiring online platforms to pay fees for musicians, performers, authors, news publishers and journalists to publish their content.

European Copyright Directive

The announcement comes after a long battle by news publishers to force tech giants like Google, Facebook and others to pay for the use of their work.

The European Union adopted the European Copyright Directive in 2019, with member states now in the process of adopting it into national legislation.

It allows third-party online platforms like Google to negotiate directly with content providers.

The issue has sparked clashes between European news publishers and tech giants, with the closure of Google News in Spain in 2014 following legislation that forced it to pay a collective licensing fee to republish news headlines or excerpts.

Spain has already adopted the copyright directive, which requires platforms such as Google and Facebook to share revenue with publishers, also allowing them to reach individual or group agreements with publishers.

In 2021, France fined Google 500 million euros for a dispute with the country's news publishers. 

/ Telegraphy /