Some California Google users were unable to access local news Friday after the tech giant restricted news links in the state in response to a bill that would require the tech giant to pay for publishers.
Don Ryan/AP
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Don Ryan/AP
Some California Google users were unable to access local news Friday after the tech giant restricted news links in the state in response to a bill that would require the tech giant to pay for publishers.
Don Ryan/AP
Google has started blocking news articles aimed at certain people in California, the company announced Friday.
Articles from California-based news organizations will not be available to an unspecified number of state residents who use Google to search the Web, in a demonstration of its power as Google tries to reverse a proposal that he’s been fighting for years.
It’s an approach Google has already deployed in the face of laws requiring the company to pay for journalism. Critics of the tech giant’s harsh tactics have compared it to blackmail.
In California, the law in question would require tech companies like Google and Meta to pay publishers for news content.
Supporters say it would offer a lifeline to California news organizations, which have long been shedding jobs.
But Google has resisted the bill, arguing that being subject to what it calls “a link tax” for linking California residents to news articles is “unworkable.”
In his blog post, Google executive Jaffer Zaidi said pending legislation, the California Journalism Preservation Act, was the wrong approach to supporting journalism.
“If passed, the CJPA could result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers,” Zaidi wrote.
According to Zaidi, the cutting of California news articles comes in anticipation of the bill’s passage. He said the move was temporary and would affect “a small percentage of California users.”
Google and Meta have developed a playbook of sorts in response to efforts requiring the tech giant to financially support the struggling news industry.
A spokesperson for Meta did not respond to questions about whether it would also begin restricting California news. Previously, Meta had promised to do so.
In Canada, Google threatened to remove all news links in the country after passing a law requiring the company to pay media outlets for their content. But Google reached a deal with government officials before even removing news articles. Meta, for its part, continues to block press articles in Canada on Instagram and Facebook.
The Canadian law is modeled after similar legislation in Australia, where Meta also blocked news articles before tense negotiations led Meta and Google to reach deals with news publishers.
Under the California measure, Google and Meta would have to pay media outlets when the companies sell advertising for news articles.
Supporters of the bill say it would provide California’s news industry with much-needed support at a time when publishers have seen subscriptions and advertising revenue decline precipitously.
Nationally, more than 20,000 media jobs were lost last year alone, according to the firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas, which tracks employment figures. This is the highest figure since 2020, when media outlets laid off some 30,000 workers during the pandemic.
At least 70% of digital ad revenue was collected by Google and Meta, according to Insider Intelligence.
The Justice Department has sued Google over its power over digital advertising, with federal officials alleging the company gained that power by violating U.S. antitrust laws.
In California, supporters of the bill say Silicon Valley has a responsibility to compensate news publishers for the astronomical profits it has reaped from disseminating news articles to the public.
Big tech companies aren’t the only ones criticizing the push. Other skeptics say that if fees for posting links were applied to the rest of the Internet, it would break the “open web” by making information less accessible.
In an article on X, formerly Twitter, Christina Warren, a staunch advocate for software engineers, called payments for hyperlinks “obscene,” since they are “antithetical to the open web and all that it represents”.
Still, supporters of the bill, which was also introduced last year but failed to gain traction, hope it will move forward and reach Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has yet to weigh in on the legislation.
“For more than a decade, tech giants have built the world’s most profitable businesses on the backs of journalists while siphoning revenue from news publishers by creating digital advertising monopolies,” wrote Courtney Radsch, who directs the Center for Journalism and Freedom in Open Markets. Institute.
She said the legislation “is not just legislation for the media industry; it is a critical step toward preserving the public interest in California.”
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