Under the terms of new agreement, Google will continue to include links to news stories in search results, and the internet giant will pay $73.6 million yearly, which is equivalent to $100 million Canadian dollars, to news publishers in Canada.
Concerns that Alphabet-owned Google had over Canada’s Online News Act have been resolved as a result of this arrangement. The intent of the act is to require large internet businesses to split advertising revenue with news publishers in the country.
“I am happy to announce that we have found a path forward with Google for the implementation of the Online News Act,” said Pascale St-Onge, the minister of heritage for Canada, in a statement. “This comes after weeks of fruitful discussions,” she continued.
The Online News Act, which is a part of a global trend to encourage internet giants to pay for news, was approved in June, and the government is currently in the process of completing rules that are anticipated to be released by a deadline of December 19th.
“After extensive discussions, we are pleased that the Government of Canada has committed to addressing our core issues with Bill C-18,” said Kent Walker, the president of global affairs for Alphabet, in a statement. “We are pleased that the Government of Canada has committed to address our core issues.” In the future, we will continue to bring essential traffic to publishers throughout Canada.
Under the terms of the deal with Canada, Google will make an annual contribution of one hundred million Canadian dollars to news organizations. This contribution will be linked to inflation, and the corporation will have the option to collaborate with a single collective in order to distribute the funds.
After claiming that the law in Canada was more rigorous than the laws in Europe and Australia, Google has previously threatened to prohibit news on its search engine, which is a major source of traffic for practically all websites on the internet. It was said by the corporation that it was concerned about the possibility of being exposed to liability that was not capped.
According to PM of Canada, Justin Trudeau, Google has committed to providing adequate assistance to journalists, particularly those working in local media. “Unfortunately, Meta continues to completely abdicate any responsibility towards democratic institutions,” the author writes.
Meta Platforms, the other internet giant that is the target of the law, has already restricted the posting of news on Facebook and Instagram due to the worries that it has with information sharing. The decision has caused the corporation to become entangled in a dispute with huge Canadian news publishers that has lasted for several months and has suffocated smaller publications.
St-Onge stated that the agreement with Google demonstrates that the new law is effective, and he demanded that Meta provide an explanation for its decision to restrict the sharing of news in Canada.
Additionally, she stated that Canada would be allowed to reopen the agreement with Google in the future in the event if better arrangements were achieved in any other part of the world anywhere else. Google came to an arrangement with a group of German publishers last month to pay them 3.2 million euros ($3.5 million) annually for the publication of their news material.
According to a firm, Meta has not changed its decision one bit.
The spokesman stated that “we do not proactively pull news from the internet to place in our users’ feeds,” in contrast to search engines. “We have been clear for a long time that the only way we can reasonably comply with the Online News Act is by ending news availability for people in Canada,” the spokesperson added.
In response to complaints from the media industry in Canada, which is seeking more stringent regulation of technology companies in order to prevent these corporations from driving news organizations out of the market for online advertising, the legislation was recently introduced.
The chief executive officer of the industry association News Media Canada, Paul Deegan, expressed his satisfaction with the arrangement and expressed gratitude to the government for assuring that publishers will receive monetary recompense. Earlier, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was the one who broke the news of the deal.
The moves that Meta has taken in the past are comparable. After Australia enacted legislation in 2021 that would require technology companies to pay publishers for utilizing their news stories, the company temporarily disabled news on its platform in Australia. This occurred after the country passed the legislation. Subsequently, it entered into agreements with publishers in Australia.
