Google said Thursday it will remove Canadian news content from its search, news and discover products after a new law meant to compensate media outlets comes into force.
The move to pull news from the world’s most dominant search engine could have a devastating impact on media outlets, which often depend on third-parties like Google to get content into the hands of readers.
The decision comes after the government’s contentious C-18 legislation passed Parliament last week. The bill has been criticized by tech giants like Meta and Google and some smaller media outlets and experts who say it’s unfair to impose what amounts to a tax on links.
The government and larger media outlets, including the newspaper lobby group and broadcasters like the CBC and CTV, have said social media companies should compensate news outlets for linking to their journalism.
The bill has been pitched as a way to keep news outlets solvent after advertising moved en masse to digital platforms, virtually wiping out a major revenue stream for journalism. The government has presented the legislation as a way to prop up an industry that has seen a steady decline since the emergence of the internet.
Meta already has said it will block Canadian news content on popular platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Once in effect, the new regulatory regime will require companies like Google and the Meta-owned Facebook — and other major online platforms that reproduce or facilitate access to news content — to either pay to post content or go through a binding arbitration process led by an arms-length regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
Google and Meta have signalled they’d rather get out of the news-posting business altogether rather than deal with this process.
“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,” said Kent Walker, the president of global affairs at Google and Alphabet.
“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.”