France and Google reach deal to end commissions

French publishers and Google on Friday announced their accord to end a month-long dispute over whether the search engine giant should pay to display news content in its search results. "After intense negotiations, agreement was reached today," the Elysee, the presidency office, said in a statement posted on its website. "The President of the Republic ...expressed the hope that a negotiated solution between newspaper publishers and Google will be found," it added. As French President Francois Hollande and Google chief Eric Schmidt signed the accord, the search engine giant was expected to create a 60-million-euro (80-million-U.S. dollar) fund to "ease the transition from the press to the digital world," according to the statement. On Tweeter, the Elysee said that "France is proud to have reached this agreement with Google, the first of its kind in the world." On September 2012, main French newspaper publishers called on the government to impose a law to force search engines to pay commissions to French media websites. In protest, Google threatened to stop linking to French media websites, angering the socialist government.