Google asked to pay all European countries for content use

Late last week, Google decided to pay $82 million to French publishers that would help their websites make money off of online advertisements. However, it seems there’s a little bit of jealously going around with other European countries. The European Publishers Council isn’t too happy about the exclusivity with France, so the EPC’s director, Francisco Pinto Balsemao, is asking Google to compensate publishers in all European countries, not just France.

Balsemao claims that search engines, like Google, get over 90% of revenues from online advertising, and a lot of that comes either directly or indirectly from news or entertainment content that’s available for free. He says that “this use is carried out without the authorization from copyright holders or without any payment in return,” which basically means that Google, and other search engines, should pay up.

The EPC represents 26 of the main media outlets that are operating in Europe, so that organization definitely has a some authority when it comes to this kind of stuff, and since ad revenue is falling throughout Europe, the group is wanting search engines to pay up a chunk, since the’re believed to essentially be taking ad revenue away from these European outlets.

Advertising revenues in Portugal fell by 90 million euros in 2012, down to 526 million euros, which is the country’s lowest since 1997. Google has declined to speak about on the situation, but according to TechCrunch, a source close to Google said that the EPC’s claim that the company gets over 90% of its revenue from web advertising is untrue.

[via Reuters]