Google, the search giant that brought in more than $73 billion in profits last year, a California law that would require it and other platforms to pay media companies. The company said it is launching a “short-term test” that will block links to local California news sources for a “small percentage” of users in the state.
The move is in response to the California Journalism Preservation Act, a bill that would charge Google, Meta and other platforms owned by California publishers in exchange for links. The proposed law, passed by the state Assembly last year, amounts to a “link tax,” said Jaffer Zaidi, vice president of news partnerships at Google.
“If passed, the CJPA may result in significant changes to the services we can provide to Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers,” Zaidi writes. Although the bill has not yet taken effect, Google wants to give publishers and users in California a taste of what these changes could look like.
The company says it will temporarily test blocking links to California news sources that would be covered by the law to “measure the impact of the legislation on our product experience.” Zaidi did not say how big the test would be or how long it would last. Google is also halting all spending on California newsrooms, including “new partnerships through Google News Showcase, our product and licensing program for news organizations, and planned expansions of the Google News Initiative.”
Google isn’t the first company to use tough tactics in the face of new laws aimed at forcing tech companies to pay for journalism. Meta has sought messages from Facebook and Instagram following the passage of a similar law and must do the same in California. (After a 2021 law came into force, Meta eventually cut contracts to pay publishers in Australia, but announced those partnerships last month.)
Google has a mixed track record on the matter: The company withdrew its news service from Spain in protest against local copyright laws that would have required royalties. But the company is worth around $150 million to pay Australian publishers. Finally, the company also threatened to remove news from search results in Canada, forking out approximately $74 million. That may sound like a lot, but these amounts are still just a tiny fraction of the $10 billion to $12 billion that Google is estimated to be paying publishers.