HispanicBusiness

Google settled a simmering dispute with French publishers Friday over linking to their stories on Google News, agreeing to contribute 60 million euros to Digital Publishing Innovation Fund to help increase revenues for French publishers.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt announced the deal in a blog posting in which he also pledged to work with French publishers to increase their revenues through Google's digital advertising.

"These agreements show that through business and technology partnerships we can help stimulate digital innovation for the benefit of consumers, our partners and the wider web," Schmidt said.

Publishers in France, Belgium and Germany had argued that by linking to headlines and excerpts in Google News, the search engine giant was unfairly using their content without payment. Google argued that it was providing a valuable audience to publishers' websites and reached a settlement with Belgian publishers last month. The dispute in Germany is still pending.