Google responds to Canada’s Online News Act as industry leaders react

Google announced via its blog on Thursday that it will be “removing links to Canadian news from Search, News, and Discover products and will no longer be able to operate Google News Showcase in Canada.” Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs, Google & Alphabet, made this announcement.

The move comes in response to Canada enacting a new law entitled Bill C-18 (the Online News Act), requiring Google and Meta to enter into agreements with Canadian news publishers to pay for news content that appears on their sites “if it helps them generate revenue.” 

In passing the bill, Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez stated, “The law creates a level playing field between online advertising giants and the shrinking news industry.” He then promised to push back on what he describes as “threats” from Facebook and Google to remove journalism from their platforms.

In almost an immediate response to the bill’s passage, Meta pledged last week to pull news from Facebook and Instagram in Canada, citing in their official statement, “The Online News Act is fundamentally flawed legislation that ignores the realities of how our platforms work, the preferences of the people who use them, and the value we provide news publishers. As the Minister of Canadian Heritage has said, how we choose to comply with the legislation is a business decision we must make, and we have made our choice.”

Now it’s Google’s turn to battle the legislation. In Thursday’s announcement, the company stated, “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.”

According to today’s press release from News Media Canada, Google has also informed all Canadian news outlets that it will be cancelling all agreements as of July 31^st.

E&P has reached out to a number of industry leaders in order gain their response to Google's recent actions.

Paul Deegan, President, and Chief Executive Officer of News Media Canada said in his statement to E&P: “Blocking access to fact-based, fact-checked news from authoritative publishers goes squarely against Google’s stated mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. It would harm user experience and devalue and degrade their search engine, which would provide an opening for Microsoft in a lucrative G7 market.”

 

Deegan went on to state: “Rather than demonstrating their extraordinary market power by withholding access to timely, accurate news for Canadians, this is a time for all stakeholders to act in good faith, as responsible corporate citizens, and engage actively in the regulatory process to ensure that regulation is balanced, predictable and fair. Google has stated that it plans to participate in the regulatory process, and it hopes that the Government will be able to outline a viable path forward. We believe there is a viable path forward. They have been a good partner to Canadian news publishers, and we look forward to working with them for many years to come.