In Brazil, South Africa, and Spain, economic law presents an opportunity to regulate platforms and safeguard reliable information. The practices of tech giants like Google and Meta significantly impact the economic sustainability of journalism and the diversity of information available to the public. These platforms' actions can lead to market concentration, posing risks to the variety of opinions in the public sphere and citizens' access to multiple, trustworthy sources of information. It is crucial for competition authorities to intervene and restore a fair playing field in these markets, ensuring that Google compensates the journalism industry for its use of their content. Several countries are taking steps in this direction.
Vincent Berthier, Head of RSF's Technology and Journalism Desk, highlights the detrimental effects of Google's practices on competition. These include:
Forced Dependence on Google-Generated Traffic: Publishers are heavily reliant on Google's search engine for their audience, as being indexed by Google is essential for maintaining visibility. Without this, they risk losing a significant portion of their readers, making it challenging to sustain their operations.
Weakening of Media Business Models: The decline in traffic directed to media outlets results in reduced direct revenue. This, in turn, increases the dependence of publishers on advertising tools, which already dominate the market.
Appropriation and Abusive Extraction of Newsroom Value: Google's practice of displaying article excerpts in search results captures user attention and advertising revenue, while simultaneously reducing traffic to the original media sources.
Promotion of AI-Generated Answers: By prioritizing AI-generated responses, Google keeps users within its ecosystem, minimizing clicks on news sites and making certain journalistic content invisible. This practice effectively positions Google as a de facto editor in the editorial process.
A Global Movement
RSF's recommendation to Brazil's Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) calls for updated tools to assess competitive harm and transparency mechanisms to ensure fair compensation for the use of journalistic work. This initiative is part of a broader global effort to demonstrate the effectiveness of economic law in curbing business models that prioritize profit over the right to reliable information.
Spain's Landmark Decision: In November 2025, the Madrid Commercial Court fined Meta 479 million EUR for violating the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) through its data exploitation practices. Meta has appealed the verdict.
South Africa's Competition Commission Report: The final report on media-online platform relations, released after two years of investigations, acknowledged the dominance of major platforms in information access. It proposed concrete solutions, and Google agreed to pay several million ZAR to South African media outlets, with YouTube guaranteeing automatic access to its partnership program for all media houses.
France's Friction with Google: In February 2025, the Paris Commercial Court halted a project to temporarily remove press content from search results, deeming it harmful to press freedom and the right to reliable information. RSF, along with the French syndicate of magazine press publishers (SEPM), opposed this initiative.
