SAN FRANCISCO – For years governments from around the globe have been fighting Google and Meta about whether they should pay for news articles and videos which appear in social media and search results. This fight is now coming to the United States.
Californian politicians have introduced a bill to force Google, Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) and other news publishing companies to pay them each time that they show links or excerpts of articles in social media or search results. Companies are fighting to stop it. They claim that the bill would create a link tax and disrupt the free flow online of information.
Google has taken its opposition a step farther by blocking News Links Google has blocked news from California-based organizations in the search results of some Californians. Google will not say for how many users it has blocked news, but described the action as a “short term test”. blog post Announced it in the beginning of this month.
Politicians and publishers of news have retaliated. Mike McGuire is the sponsor of this bill. He said that Google’s threat was “clearly a misuse of power” and showed “extraordinary hubris”.
These actions by Google demonstrate why legislation is needed. “It’s very concerning that one firm can effectively cut off free information flow to Californians”, said Brittney Barrsotti is the General Counsel of California News Publishers Association. More than 350 publishers, including The Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle, signed a letter on April 18, supporting this bill.
Google’s move is part of a larger conflict between tech giants, and news organizations. News organizations have been struggling with declining advertising revenues, job losses and bankruptcy of newspapers for years. They are now turning to government to enforce new laws that force tech platforms to split some of their profits from web traffic with journalism organisations. The laws, say the proponents, are fair and will keep journalism alive. However, the tech companies argue that requiring payment for posting links or portions of articles is against the spirit and freedom of the internet.
Meta will now block all links to news on If the bill becomes law, it will affect its social media platforms.
“[Big Tech] These laws are a real abomination. They’re trying to do everything they can in order to prevent them,” Anya Schiffrin said, Director of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs’ Technology, Media and Communications Specialization.
Barsotti said that California’s news publishers have not seen any major impacts from Google’s actions. She said that some Californians had reported being unable to access local newspaper websites.
News Media Alliance (NMA), an industry association representing 2200 news outlets across the United States, has accused Google of possibly violating competition laws. The group sent letters to both the Justice Department as well as the Federal Trade Commission, asking them to look into Google’s actions. FTC spokesperson declined to make any comments. The DOJ spokesperson did not respond to a comment request.
Google and Facebook’s dominance of the advertising industry has steadily grown over the past two decades. Google generated $65.5 billion dollars in advertising revenue during the 4th quarter of 2023, and Facebook $40.1 billion. News organizations, which used to thrive on classified ads and advertisements, have been shrinking. Local newspapers have been cut by thousands. Tens of thousands journalists lost their jobs after newspapers closed in the United States.
Facebook, Google, and other platforms online became important in reaching readers as the industry adjusted to the Internet. Facebook has been a major source of traffic for news organizations, and this allowed internet-native companies like BuzzFeed or Vice Media to expand quickly. Meta, however, has failed to emphasize news in recent years. This destabilized the businesses of these companies and led to new layoffs. Google is still the main source of traffic to most news outlets, as well as the site where people turn when they want to find out about the world or relevant news.
Australia will pass a law in 2021 requiring Meta, Google and news publishers to pay them for the use of their content. Meta closed all links to news on its platform, and Google threatened to remove its search engine. Australia. The government and companies eventually reached a settlement and agreed on payments. The deals, according to news organizations across the country, have enabled them to become more competitive. hire more journalistsParticularly in rural areas that are underserved.
Canadian media and politicians are taking note. They soon passed their own legislation. Google ran a “test” similar to the one that it runs now in California and blocked some Canadians’ access to news results. Meta took it a step further and removed all news links from its website.
The fight over the Facebook ban became national in nature when people found it difficult to get important information about wildfires during the summer 2023. The opposition politicians accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of rushing through a bill that could backfire on Canadian media organizations. Google, the Canadian government, and Google reached a compromise. The company and the government agreed that a fund of $100 million would be set up to distribute to the news organizations in Canada.
Meta has also held firm. Facebook and Instagram are blocking all news links in Canada. Dwayne Winseck is a professor of communications at Carleton University, Ottawa. He said that this has resulted in a significant drop in traffic to Canadian news organisations. It’s still too early to know if the drop in traffic is going to lead to an equal drop in revenues, said Winseck.
Meta’s loss might not be as bad as it seems, simply because of the size and reputation of the company. Already heavily reduced the number of news It promotes in its algorithm. Blayne Hagart, associate professor of political science at Brock University, St. Catherines in Ontario, says that if Google blocked news from California, or any other place, it would have a much greater impact.
Haggart stated that “Google is a platform for people to access the knowledge of the entire world”. He said that preventing people from using Google to access news would amount to “almost a war on a nation” because free information access is vital for a healthy society.
Californian publishers are not all in favor of the legislation. The bill was opposed by some editorials Published by: Last week, Jo Ellen Green Kaiser wrote in the Jewish News of Northern California that the bill would “crush our internet discoverability” if Google decided to block news content.
On its website, the Chamber of Progress, which represents tech companies such as Google, Meta and others, reported that small publishers of news, including The Alameda Post, and The Times of San Diego, had been threatening to sue some smaller publications. Oppose the BillIn addition, other business groups like the California Chamber of Commerce. The Alameda post and Times of San Diego did not respond to requests for comments.
Internet freedom activists have expressed concern about rules that force tech companies to compensate for content or links. American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation oppose a federal law called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which would allow news agencies to negotiate collectively with Big Tech platforms for payments for their content. The California law also allows news outlets to sue tech companies for restricting their reach. This is “a direct assault” against the rights of businesses to moderate online content, according a group open internet organisations. Letter to the legislators 2022.
California’s bill allows news organizations to request a share of money earned from ads that appear next to content they create or on links to sites. Tech companies must make payments quarterly and cannot penalize the news organizations who apply for payments. The news organizations that receive these payments will have to submit annual reports showing how they used the money.
Jaffer Zaidi, Google’s Vice President of Global News Partnerships and a recent blogger for the company, argued that California’s bill would be beneficial to hedge funds who have been purchasing local news outlets in order to turn them into machines that produce low-quality content. Zaidi said, “We’ve long maintained that this approach is wrong to support journalism.”
The bill continues to move forward.
The last thing that we want is a hollowed out or collapsed news media. This is bad for democracy and for the local community. “It only empowers the spread of fake news,” Scott Wiener said, a Democratic California State Senator representing San Francisco who supports this bill.
Wiener stated that “Google has a temper tantrum.” “My wish is that Google gets over its temper tantrum and comes to their senses. “Sit down at the table and work out a possible solution.”