Google set to remove links to Canadian news sites from search engines in the country
Google plans to remove links to Canadian news sites from its search engines in the country, after the Canadian Parliament passed a law requiring major online platforms to pay news outlets to share their stories.
Kent Walker, Google’s president of global affairs,
said in a press release Thursday that the law “remains unworkable,” leading the company to make the “difficult decision” to remove links to Canadian news from Google Search, Google News and other products in Canada when the law goes into effect.
Walker argued that the Online News Act “creates uncertainty for our products and exposes us to uncapped financial liability simply for facilitating Canadians’ access to news from Canadian publishers.”
“We have been saying for over a year that this is the wrong approach to supporting journalism in Canada and may result in significant changes to our products,” he said.
“We’re disappointed it has come to this,” Walker added. “We don’t take this decision or its impacts lightly and believe it’s important to be transparent with Canadian publishers and our users as early as possible.”
Meta similarly said last week that it would
follow through on its plans to block news content Facebook and Instagram in Canada over the new law.
“We have repeatedly shared that in order to comply with Bill C-18, passed today in Parliament, content from news outlets, including news publishers and broadcasters, will no longer be available to people accessing our platforms in Canada,” Meta leaders said in a statement last Thursday.
Google plans to remove links to Canadian news sites from its search engines in the country, after the Canadian Parliament passed a law requiring major online platforms to pay news outlets to share …
thehill.com
The Government of Canada has enacted a new law called Bill C-18 (the Online News Act), requiring two companies to pay for simply showing links to news, something that everyone else does for free. The unprecedented decision to put a price on links (a so-called “link tax”) creates uncertainty for our products and exposes us to uncapped financial liability simply for facilitating Canadians’ access to news from Canadian publishers. We have been saying for over a year that this is the wrong approach to supporting journalism in Canada and may result in significant changes to our products.
We have now informed the Government that when the law takes effect, we unfortunately will have to remove links to Canadian news from our Search, News and Discover products in Canada, and that C-18 will also make it untenable for us to continue offering our Google News Showcase product in Canada.
We’re disappointed it has come to this. We don’t take this decision or its impacts lightly and believe it’s important to be transparent with Canadian publishers and our users as early as possible.
How we tried to improve Bill C-18
We already pay to support Canadian journalism through our programs and partnerships - and we’ve been clear we’re prepared to do more. As part of our
Google News Showcase program, we have negotiated agreements covering over 150 news publications across Canada. Last year alone, we linked to Canadian news publications more than 3.6 billion times — at no charge — helping publishers make money through ads and new subscriptions. This referral traffic from links has been valued at $250 million CAD annually. We’re willing to do more; we just can’t do it in a way that breaks the way that the web and search engines are designed to work, and that creates untenable product and financial uncertainty.
Ever since the Government introduced C-18 last year, we have shared our experiences in other countries and been clear that unworkable legislation could lead to changes that affect the availability of news on Google’s products in Canada.
We have successfully collaborated with Governments and news publishers around the world on the shared goal of strengthening the news industry, and we currently have thousands of mutually beneficial agreements with news publications around the world.
We tried to take this same approach with Bill C-18. We repeatedly offered constructive
feedback and recommended
solutions that would have made it more workable for both platforms and publishers, unlocking further financial support for Canadian journalism. We also endorsed the alternative model of an independent fund for Canadian journalism supported by both platforms and the Government, an approach that’s worked elsewhere. We appeared several times before the
Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and the
Senate Committee on Transport and Communications and submitted detailed
recommendations to both committees.
We advocated for reasonable and balanced amendments to the legislation for over a year. None of our suggestions for changes to C-18 were accepted.
Last week, just as the Bill was approaching final passage and Royal Assent, the Government agreed to discuss the possibility of addressing some of the most critical issues, which we welcomed. In that discussion, we asked for clarity on financial expectations platforms face for simply linking to news, as well as a specific, viable path towards exemption based on our programs to support news and our commercial agreements with publishers.
While we appreciate the Government’s acknowledgement that our concerns were reasonable and confirmation that the law will not apply until they adopt implementing regulations, they have not provided us with sufficient certainty that the regulatory process will be able to resolve structural issues with the legislation (such as forced payment for links and uncapped financial liability).
What happens now?
We plan to participate in the regulatory process and will continue to be transparent with Canadians and publishers as we move forward. We hope that the Government will be able to outline a viable path forward. Otherwise, we remain concerned that Bill C-18 will make it harder for Canadians to find news online, make it harder for journalists to reach their audiences, and reduce valuable free web traffic to Canadian publishers.
November 29 Update:We thank the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pascale St-Onge, for acknowledging our concerns and deeply engaging in a series of productive meetings abo…
blog.google
"The dominance over advertising once enjoyed by legacy media is over. Google and Facebook have a combined 80 per cent share of all online ad revenue in Canada and rake in an eye-popping $9.7 billion a year, according to government data.
According to government figures, more than 450 news outlets in Canada have closed since 2008 and at least one third of Canadian journalism jobs have disappeared over that same time period."
globalnews.ca
pressprogress.ca
