[Jiggly]

This all seems a bit peculiar.

It's very peculiar Indeed.

Here's a recent article I've just stumbled across, which Is even more bizarre.

This does just get more interesting. There was a lot of "legal speak" in that article but I managed to get the gist. I wasn't at all aware about the French part. Especially this:
"The agreement with France allows Google to negotiate individual licenses whereby payment will be based on specific and measurable metrics. This includes Google paying on behalf of the reader for any content published behind paywalls, allowing users access to content they wouldn’t be able to see unless they made a payment."