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Google CEO Sundar Pichai
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Google has made good on a threat to pull its Google News Service in Canada after Bill C-18 — legislation designed to get U.S. digital tech giants to pay local publishers for news snippets shared or repurposed on their platforms — became law in the country.
“As a result, we have informed the government that we have made the difficult decision that when the law takes effect we will be removing links to Canadian news from our Search, News, and Discover products and will no longer be able to operate Google News Showcase in Canada,” Kent Walker, president of global affairs at Google and Alphabet, said on Google’s Canada blog page on Thursday.
Passage of Bill C-18, also known as the Online News Act, was designed to get Meta and Google to the table to negotiate commercial licensing deals with Canadian publishers for their local platforms. On June 23, Meta announced it will block Canadians from viewing or sharing news on its Facebook and Instagram sites north of the border, and now Google has followed that lead.
“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,” Walker added on the company blog. Google did an earlier test run that temporarily blocked news content for certain Canadian audiences, and has now widened that action to all of its Google news search products north of the border.
The CRTC, Canada’s TV and telecom regulator, will oversee the Online News Act and bargaining — including possible final-offer arbitration — between the U.S. digital platforms like Google and Meta and Canadian news publishers.
Both Silicon Valley giants pulling their news search products from their Canadian websites is seen as brinkmanship while they negotiate commercial deals with the CRTC, or alternatively pursue side-deals after direct negotiations with the federal government in Ottawa.
“We plan to participate in the regulatory process and will continue to be transparent with Canadians and publishers as we move forward. We hope that the government will be able to outline a viable path forward,” Google’s Walker added.
Bill C-18 follows similar legislation in Australia where Meta also blocked news content from reaching local users before establishing a fund to compensate local publishers.
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