After Meta, Alphabet threatens in turn. On Thursday, June 29, Google’s parent company said it wanted to remove all links to Canadian media sites from its news platforms in response to the “online news law”, voted on June 22. This legislation, dubbed “C-18,” forces major web companies to pay to carry local media content. It will come into force in six months. “We have made the difficult decision to remove, as soon as the law comes into force, links to Canadian news in our Search, News and Discover products”announced Kent Walker, head of global operations for Google and Alphabet, in a blog post.
The decision of the American group marks a failure in negotiations with the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau. It adds to that of Meta, which announced on June 22 that Facebook and Instagram will block access to publications from Canadian media.
The precedents of Australia and “neighbouring rights”
The new legislation requires major digital companies to enter into commercial agreements with Canadian media for publications shared on their platforms. The Canadian government hopes that these new revenues will support the media in crisis. Between 2008 and 2021, 450 media closed in the country, according to the government.
In return, groups specializing in new technologies denounce a law that could force them to pay to display content that does not bring them any direct benefit. For Alphabet, the government’s decision to “Put a price on links” creates from “uncertainty for our products and exposes us to unlimited financial debt”. In 2022, Google displayed more than 3.6 billion links to Canadian media, said Richard Gingras, vice president of Google News. This bill is inspired by the one adopted in 2021 by Australia, the first of its kind in the world. The text was easily adopted after Facebook and Google reached agreements.
Faced with the same situation, the European Union introduced in 2019 a “neighbouring right”, which should allow the remuneration of press publishers for content used by online platforms. After reluctantly, Google ended up signing agreements with French newspapers, a world first. This isn’t the first time Alphabet has blocked news on one of its platforms. In 2014, the company shut down Google News in Spain in response to a law forcing online news aggregators to pay media sites. After an eight-year hiatus, the site was reactivated in 2022 as a result of Madrid’s application of European “neighbouring rights”.