California politicians make news every time Google and Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) display portions of articles or links to articles in search results or on social media. He is pushing a bill that would force publishers to pay up. The companies are lobbying furiously to stop the law, which they say would create a “link tax” and undermine the free flow of information online.
Now, Google is taking its resistance a step further, completely blocking news links from California-based news organizations from appearing in search results for some California residents. Google hasn’t said how many people are blocking news, but called the move a “short-term test” in a blog post earlier this month.
Politicians and newspapers also objected. “This is a dangerous threat by Google, a clear abuse of power, and an extraordinary display of arrogance,” said California Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Calif., the bill’s sponsor.
“These actions by Google demonstrate why the bill is needed. The potential for one company to effectively cut off the free flow of information to Californians is deeply concerning. ” he said. Brittney Barsotti, General Counsel, California News Publishers Association; More than 350 newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, signed an April 18 letter supporting the bill.
Google’s move is the latest move in an escalating conflict between tech giants and the news industry. After years of declining advertising revenues, layoffs and newspaper bankruptcies, news organizations are increasingly asking governments for new rules forcing technology platforms to share a portion of the revenue they earn from the web with journalism organizations. We are calling for the establishment of While supporters say the law is a fair way to keep journalism alive, tech companies are not open to requiring payment to publish links or parts of public news stories. They argue that it violates the spirit of a free internet and could be subject to endless legal restrictions. Challenges from non-journalistic organizations seeking similar deals.
Meta announced that it would block all news links If passed, this bill would also protect social platforms.
“[Big Tech] I really, really hate these laws. And they’re doing everything they can to stop it,” said Anya Shiffrin, chair of the technology, media, and communications department at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
So far, California news publishers have not seen a major impact from Google’s move, Barsotti said. She said some Californians are reporting that they can’t access their local newspaper’s website.
The News Media Alliance, an industry group representing 2,200 news organizations nationwide, accused Google of potentially violating competition laws and sent letters to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission demanding Google’s move. Each agency was asked to investigate. An FTC spokesperson declined to comment. A Justice Department spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
For two decades, Google and Facebook have steadily increased their control over the advertising world. Google generated $65.5 billion in ad revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023 alone, while Facebook earned $40.1 billion in the same period. Meanwhile, news organizations that had thrived on advertisements and advertisements shrank.thousands of local Newspapers in the United States have closed and tens of thousands of journalists have lost their jobs.
As the news industry adapted to the internet, how Facebook, Google, and other online platforms reached readers became key. For years, Facebook has brought massive amounts of traffic to news publishers and enabled Internet-native organizations like BuzzFeed and Vice Media to grow rapidly. But in recent years, business for these companies has deteriorated as Meta has de-emphasized news, leading to a new wave of layoffs. Google remains the most important traffic source for most news organizations and the place most people go to learn about the world and find relevant news.
In 2021, Australia passed legislation requiring Meta and Google to negotiate payments with news publishers for content they publish on their sites. Both companies fought back fiercely, with Meta shutting down all news links on its platform and Google threatening to pull its entire search engine from its site. Australia. However, the government and the company found a compromise and the payment was eventually negotiated. The country’s media outlets say the deal allows them to hire more journalists, especially in underserved regions.
The Canadian press and politicians also took notice. Soon they were pushing their own laws. The tech giants are fighting back again, with Google conducting a “test” similar to the one it’s currently running in California to prevent some Canadians from seeing news in search results. Meta went further and blocked all links to news content on the site.
The battle became a national political issue in the summer of 2023, when some people struggled to find important news about wildfires due to Facebook’s news ban. Opposition politicians accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government of rushing through bad legislation that backfired and actually hurt Canadian news organizations. Ultimately, Google and the government compromised, and the company agreed to create a $100 million news fund that would be distributed to news providers across the country.
Meta, on the other hand, has held the line. News links are still completely blocked on Facebook and Instagram in Canada. Dwayne Wincek, a communications professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, said this “significantly reduced traffic to Canadian news outlets.” But he said it’s too early to tell whether the drop in traffic will translate into a similar drop in revenue.
The blow from Meta may be manageable simply because the company has already drastically reduced the amount of news it promotes to users in its algorithms. Blaine Haggart, an associate professor of political science at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., said the impact would be even greater if Google were to block news in California or elsewhere.
“Google has marketed itself as an interface between people and the world’s knowledge,” Haggart said. Free access to information is so important to a functioning society that blocking people from accessing news through Google would be “almost an act of war against the state,” he said.
Not all California publishers support the bill. Jo Ellen Greene-Kiser, CEO of Jewish News of Northern California, wrote in an editorial published last week that if the bill would force Google to block news content, it would “make it easier to “It could destroy discoverability,” he wrote.
The Chamber of Progress, an industry group that represents technology companies such as Google and Meta, says on its website that in addition to other business organizations such as the California Chamber of Commerce and Industry, some smaller companies such as the Alameda Post and the Times of San Diego News publishers also said they oppose the bill. Commercial. The Alameda Post and Times of San Diego did not respond to requests for comment.
Internet freedom advocates have also expressed concern about government rules that force tech companies to pay for links and content. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation have proposed an antitrust exception called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act that allows news organizations to collectively bargain with Big Tech platforms and enter into agreements to pay for their content. opposed to the federal bill. Allowing news organizations to sue tech platforms for limiting their reach, which is also included in the California law, is a “direct attack” on companies’ right to control content online and is completely unacceptable. It will create new problems, a group of open internet organizations said. In a 2022 letter to MPs, he said:
California’s bill would allow news organizations to apply to Google and Meta for a portion of the revenue they earn from ads that appear next to their content or links to their sites. Tech companies must make quarterly payments and cannot algorithmically downgrade and penalize news organizations that apply for payments. News organizations receiving payments must produce annual reports proving they spent the payments on journalism.
Jaffer Zaidi, Google’s vice president of global news partnerships, said in the company’s recent blog post that California’s bill would benefit hedge funds that are already buying up local news organizations and turning them into low-quality content machines. he claimed. “We have long said this is the wrong approach to supporting journalism,” Zaidi wrote.
Still, the bill is moving forward.
“The last thing we need is for the news media to become hollowed out or collapse. That would be terrible for democracy and terrible for communities. It would only empower the spread of fake news.” said Democratic California Sen. Scott Wiener, who represents San Francisco and is sponsoring the bill.
“Google is throwing a tantrum,” Wiener said. “My hope is that Google will overcome this problem and This is a table for finding solutions. ”
