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Google, the search giant that generated profits exceeding $73 billion last year, California bill that would require it and other platforms to pay media outlets. The company announced that it had begun a “short-term test” that would block links to local news sources in California for a “small percentage” of users in the state.
The move comes in response to California’s Journalism Preservation Act, a bill that would require the use of Google, Meta, and other platforms California publishers charge for links. The proposed law, which passed the state Assembly last year, amounts to a “link tax,” according to Google’s vice president of news partnerships, Jaafar Al-Zaidi.
“If the CJPA passes, it could lead to significant changes in the services we can provide to Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers,” Al-Zaidi wrote. But even though the bill has not yet become law, Google is choosing to give publishers and users in California an idea of what these changes could look like.
The company says it will temporarily test blocking links to news sources in California that would be covered under the law in order to “measure the impact of the legislation on the experience of our products.” Al-Zaidi did not mention the size of the test or how long it would take. Google will also halt all of its spending on newsrooms in California, including “new partnerships through the Google News Showcase, our product and licensing program for news organizations, and planned expansions of the Google News Initiative.”
Google is not the first company to use harsh tactics in the face of new laws aimed at forcing tech companies to pay for journalism. Meta pulled news from Facebook and Instagram after a similar law was passed To do the same thing in California. (Meta eventually struck deals to pay publishers in Australia after the 2021 law came into effect, but said last month it was those partnerships.)
Google has a mixed record on the issue, having pulled its news service from Spain in protest of local copyright laws that would have required a licensing fee. But the company It’s worth about $150 million to Australian publishers. It is also the ultimate Threats to remove news from search results in Canada, costing over $74 million. This may seem like a lot, but these amounts are still just a small portion of the $10 to $12 billion figure Estimate that Google should pay publishers.
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