I read the story and every link and it appears that the French courts have required Google to show news snippets and to pay for the right to do so. They have judged that if Google decides to simply not show snippets, that is an abuse of market power. So they are prohibited from changing the way they index, rank and display news snippets, and are required to pay.
So the 1% experiment runs afoul of that agreement.
I guess the idea is that since Google is an effective monopoly, if it refuses to display or refuses to pay, that destroys French media companies.
But since it already owes $20 decillion in fines, I’m not sure what another $900,000 per day changes.
