Google has been reportedly in discussions with publishers about paying licensing fees to include excerpts of their articles in Google News search results.

The talks are taking place primarily with French and other European publishers, and may not lead to any agreements, according to Bloomberg. A deal would apply only to news products like the Google News vertical, not general web content queries.

Google sparked an outcry in France last fall after it said it would show stripped-down French news search results that wouldn’t include article previews or snippets following a new copyright law. French publishers accused the search giant of strong-arming them. French antitrust regulators at the time said they would investigate Google over its implementation of the rules.

News executives argue that their journalism is what’s drawing users to Facebook and Google platforms, while the two tech giants are capturing most of the online ad dollars.

Richard Gingras, Google’s vice president of news, said helping people find quality journalism is “important to informed democracy and helps support a sustainable news industry.”

“We’re talking with partners and looking at more ways to expand our ongoing work with publishers,” he added.

Facebook has introduced a separate news section in its flagship app and agreed to pay some publishers $1 million to $3 million a year to put their articles in it.