The French press launches its counterattack in front of Google by announcing a complaint to the competition authorities: the publishers denounce a new mechanism that supposedly should promote a better distribution of digital revenue.
This collective initiative has been announced at a press conference by Jean-Michel Baylet, head of the Dépêche du Midi and president of the Alliance of the Generalist Press, the main organization in that sector.
"We rebel" because "nobody can ignore the law, as Google does," Baylet said. The competition authority has already taken this case that could be a punishment for the US company for abuse of dominant position,
"The future of the entire French press and the European press is at stake," said Baylet, who advocates a "fight for the freedom of citizens to inform themselves."
Complaints by the Alliance and other organizations, such as the Journal Publishers Union (SEPM) and the National Federation of Specialized Press (FNPS), will be submitted according to Baylet "from next week" . The France-Presse Agency also intends to file a complaint.
Google has rejected the arguments of the press editors, in a statement released by AFP. "Google is helping people find news content from many sources and the results are always based on relevance, not business," said a spokesman for the group.
In addition, "publishers have never had so many options on how their content is displayed on Google," said the spokesman of the Californian company: "We do not remove them from the search engine and do not change the way we evaluate the relevance of a page ".
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