Google blocks California website over dispute over news payments

Google has begun blocking access to California news outlets for some users in the state, the tech giant announced on Friday. It's all because Google is angry about a bill that would force some publishers to pay for their content, known as the link tax.

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The bill, known as the California Journalism Protection Act (CJPA), has passed the California House of Representatives, also known as the Legislature, but must be voted on by the state Senate and signed by Governor Gavin Newsom before becoming law. Newsom has not yet commented on the bill.

Google said Friday that if the CJPA passes, it could result in significant changes to the services it can provide to Californians and the traffic it can provide to California publishers. By helping people find news stories, we help publishers of all sizes grow their audiences for free.

While it's certainly true that Google helps people find news stories, the problem is that much of the advertising money goes to Big Tech platforms like Google and Facebook, rather than to the publishers who create the news content. That's what I'm doing. This bill goes some way to fixing that by forcing Google to pay publishers.

Google has made similar threats in recent years, after similar proposals were made in countries such as Australia, India and Canada. In nearly every case, Google has proposed shutting down Google services such as search across countries, but ultimately followed each jurisdiction's laws without major disruption.

Metas Facebook faces similar hurdles in other countries that require the company to pay for aggregating local news content, but while Google has acquiesced, Facebook has steered itself in an entirely new direction. I chose to cut it. That direction includes eliminating news services entirely while claiming that Facebook users don't actually care about news.

Google on Friday acknowledged the battles it has waged in other countries, without mentioning that it has paid out millions of dollars to publishers.

As we have shared when other countries considered similar proposals, the uncapped financial exposure created by the CJPA is not viable. If enacted, the CJPA in its current form would create a level of business uncertainty that is unacceptable to any company. To prepare for CJPA impact, we are beginning a short-term test with a small number of users in California. The testing process includes removing links to California news websites that may be subject to CJPA to measure the law's impact on the product experience. Further investments in California's news ecosystem, including new partnerships through Google News Showcase, news product and licensing programs, and plans to expand the Google News initiative, are temporarily suspended until California's regulatory environment becomes clearer. It had stopped.

Google did not respond to emailed questions Friday about exactly how many users are currently participating in the testing process to remove links to California news sites. It's also not clear what qualifies as a California news site, given the borderless nature of the Internet.

Google claims California's proposed law would only benefit big publishers, but some say it's dangerous. As one Cal Matters commentator recently wrote in an opinion column:

Critics argue that CJPA will primarily benefit major media outlets, but the fact that major news organizations benefit is not necessarily a bad thing. They employ thousands of people, create jobs, conduct expensive research, and lobby on behalf of journalism. It also generates and receives the most traffic from technology platforms.

Clearly, there are many factors at play here, and reasonable people can disagree about the role that government should play in keeping journalism's business model sustainable. But there's no question that companies like Google hold monopoly power over the news that people around the world can see.

After all, the first thing companies like Google and Facebook threatened to do when faced with pay-to-publisher laws was to turn off the faucet of news traffic to everyone in those countries. And it's hard to argue that free market solutions can solve the problem, even if only a handful of companies have the power to do it.

Sources 1/ https://Google.com/ 2/ https://gizmodo.com/google-blocks-california-news-outlets-paying-cjpa-1851406498 The mention sources can contact us to remove/changing this article

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