Google headquarters is seen in Mountain Panorama, California, United States on May 15, 2023.
Tayfun Coskun | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Google will begin get rid of links to California news websites from search results for some Californians in response to a bill that would coerce online ad companies to pay a fee for connecting state residents to news sources.
In a blog post on Friday announcing the “short-term investigation,” Jaffer Zaidi, Google’s vice president of global news partnership, said the bill, called the California Journalism Security Act, represents “the wrong approach to supporting journalism” and “would create a level of business uncertainty that no company could up.”
The bill was introduced last year and remains pending in the state legislature.
Google’s announcement marks the latest breathtaking change in how large internet platforms handle news. Facebook parent Meta has been retreating from the talk business, and said in September that it would “deprecate” its Facebook news tab in European countries including the U.K., France and Germany as “division of an ongoing effort to better align our investments to our products and services people value the most.”
Also last year, Meta banned Canadian consumers from sharing news on its apps after Canada’s federal government passed the Online News Act, which affected tech companies to pay content fees to domestic media outlets.
The recent developments have upended many online publishers that tally on Facebook and Google for traffic and are particularly painful for publications that rely on advertising revenue.
“If passed, CJPA may denouement in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers,” Zaidi wrote.
Google also foretold Friday it’s “pausing further investments in the California news ecosystem, including new partnerships through Google News Showcase, our artifact and licensing program for news organizations, and planned expansions of the Google News Initiative.”
Supporters of the California bill say it longing help news publishers receive a fair chunk of the ad profits reaped by tech juggernauts like Apple, Google and Meta. But some critics within the journalism bustle worry the bill will foster a compensation ecosystem favoring larger, more-resourced newsrooms over their younger counterparts.
Google has previously opposed similar media payment measures abroad, including in Spain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. But the plc has ultimately acquiesced to the rules.
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