A French Court this week ordered Google to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to a French mapping company for stifling competition by offering its Google Maps service for free, the AFP reports.

A French Court this week ordered Google to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages to a French mapping company for stifling competition by offering its Google Maps service for free.

Bottin Cartographes, which offers map services to businesses for a cost, filed an unfair competition complaint against Google France and its parent company Google, arguing the Web giant was engaging in anticompetitive practices by providing free mapping services. The Paris court on Tuesday upheld the compliant, ordering Google to pay 500,000 Euros ($660,000) in damages and interest to Bottin Cartographes along with a 15,000 ($20,000) Euro fine, according to an AFP report.

The ruling was the culmination of a two-year legal battle for Bottin Cartographes.

"We proved the illegality of (Google's) strategy to remove its competitors ... the court recognized the unfair and abusive character of the methods used and allocated Bottin Cartographes all it claimed," Bottin Cartographes' lawyer, Jean-David Scemmama, told the AFP. "This is the first time Google has been convicted for its Google Maps application."

However, a Google France spokesman told the AFP that the company is planning to fight the ruling.

"We will appeal this decision," the spokesman said. "We remain convinced that a free high-quality mapping tool is beneficial for both Internet users and websites. There remains competition in this sector for us, both in France and internationally."

This is not the first time Google has run into legal trouble in France. Last March, France's data privacy regulator handed the Internet company for collecting private information as part of its Street View service.