Google is to pay €60 million into a special fund to help French media develop their presence on the internet under a top-level deal signed yesterday, but will not pay them for posting links to their content.

French publishers had been pushing for Google to pay them licensing fees for listing headlines and snippets of articles in its search engine results.

The agreement, signed by President François Hollande and Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt, follows months of talks between local media companies and the internet search giant brokered by a government-appointed mediator. Google settled a similar case with Belgian publishers in December but still faces a dispute with publishers in Germany.

Schmidt said in a Google blog post on Friday’s deal in addition to paying into the fund Google would help publishers increase their revenue using its advertising technology. Hollande had threatened to draft legislation to force Google to pay if no deal was signed.