If only they did this in response to the Shutterstock lawsuit
OTTAWA, June 29 (Reuters) - Google said on Thursday it plans to block Canadian news on its platform in Canada, joining Facebook in escalating a campaign against a new law requiring payments to local news publishers.
Alphabet-owned (GOOGL.O) Google will remove links to Canadian news from search results and other products in Canada when the law takes effect in about six months.
Facebook-owner Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) made a similar announcement last week after the passage of Bill C-18, or the Online News Act.
Canada's media industry has called for tighter regulation of internet giants to allow news businesses to recoup financial losses suffered in the years that Facebook and Google gained a greater share of the online advertising market.
The independent budgetary watchdog in Canada estimated last year that news businesses could receive about C$330 million ($249 million) per year from deals mandated under the legislation.
Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, who introduced the bill last year, has said the platforms have no obligations under the act immediately and that the government was open to consulting with them on the regulatory and implementation process.
Facebook and Google said the proposals were unsustainable for their businesses and for months signaled possibly ending news availability in Canada unless the act was amended.
Canada's federal government has pushed back against suggestions to make changes, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in June accused the companies of using "bullying tactics."
"Big tech would rather spend money to change their platforms to block Canadians from accessing good quality and local news instead of paying their fair share to news organizations," Rodriguez said in a statement on Thursday.
"This shows how deeply irresponsible and out of touch they are, especially when they make billions of dollars off of Canadian users."
Google's president of global affairs, Kent Walker, said in a blog post that the law remains unworkable and that the company did not believe regulatory process would be able to resolve "structural issues with the legislation."
"We have now informed the government that when the law takes effect, we unfortunately will have to remove links to Canadian news from our Search, News and Discover products in Canada," Walker said.
The news outlets affected by Google's decision would be based on the government's definition of "eligible news businesses" when rules are finalized for implementation.
Google will also end its News Showcase program in Canada, under which the company has agreements with 150 news publications across the country. Reuters has a contract with Google to produce News Showcase panels, including in Canada.
The law forces online platforms to negotiate with news publishers and pay for their content. A similar law passed in Australia in 2021 prompted threats from Google and Facebook to curtail their services. Both struck deals with Australian media companies after the legislation was amended.
Google has argued Canada's law is broader than those in Australia and Europe, saying it puts a price on news story links displayed in search results and can apply to outlets that do not produce news.
The search engine giant had proposed that the displaying of news content, rather than links, be a basis for payment and that only businesses that produce news according to journ*listic standards are eligible.
Other articles:
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-canada-law-online-news-c-18-bill-news-links-rcna91882
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66056742
Reddit threads (mild canadian malding):
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Fun fact: texas, florida, California each have populations and economic activity that dwarf Canada by several degrees of magnitude
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No?
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Each of those is a terrible place to live, luckily for unique reasons so there's a choice to make.
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here I typed out the URL manually cuz im a nice guy
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Ok, but now I'm thinking about a cumtown-esque reimagining of Bee Movie but the Jerry Seinfeld bee is fricking a high schooler and every time he's criticized for it he's like "what because I'm a bee? You fricking antihoneyite" and then his best friend who's also a bee just screams the g*mer word like 75 times in The Laugh Factory and has to apologize on late night TV and it just sort of ends
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Smell that Midwest cope lol
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Only Californians know how bad California is
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me living in a CA suburb not dealing with homeless while working remote
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Same, it's terrible.
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Fun fact, you're r-slurred
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High order of imbecilation
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yeh sry leafs Canada is just one convoluted american state. We've known this for aboot 200 years but didn't know how to say it in cheese-eating surrendermonkey french
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TFW known it for about 50 years before Canada even existed.
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Since it's post-2012, 200yrs is accurate. Been that long since last we could dunk on them.Not including the Bluenoserace in 1921.
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In 300 years, it'll be obscure trivia that Canada was technically an independent nation. Like, most people don't know the individual states of the Holy Roman Empire or the Vikings.
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Canada prob struggles competing against Mexico and India
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yyea and economies can be compared that way, just like big west have killed off tiny russian economy with sanctions.
oh wait... maybe entities cant be compared?
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Yes, there is absolutely no way to tell if Cameroon is wealthier than Singapore.
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They used the same line when they did it in Australia.
Also they took news off their platforms when we did it too for a week or two, then gave up and started sucking the journock
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Didn’t they give daddy murdoch a sweetheart deal to make the proposed code go away? Maybe canada doesn’t have a central business to negotiate with.
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Nah the whole point of the code as far as I remember was to force them to make deals with daddy Murdoch (and other companies too ig), so it was a pretty big techcel defeat and a journo victory
Looking at the ACCC text it sounds like Google and Facebook ended up so cucked that they caved voluntarily before the government actually had to use the code tho
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Finally RDrama can take the place of the leading news agregators on Canuckland.
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I don't read the news so I already catch an embarrassing amount of new stories from dramatards
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Imagine allowing yourself to get slowly brainwashed by carp.
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It's honestly not a bad addition to my news feed
Same can be said for reddit or facebook if you use it right. Unfortunately most people are exclusively following wingcuck sources and schizo accounts so they get a biased r-slur perspective.
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“This just in, everyone is hoping Canada burns to the ground, back to you Quadarius”
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Journ*lists here have been malding so hard about this, from trashy right wing tabloid to "distinguished" left wing newspaper of record
They're all calling it "censorship" which is very dumb
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Their position is idiotic anyway. If news organizations have enough clout like the wall st. journal, they can actually paywall their content, depriving google of content for their aggregator. Barely any of them do, instead 100% relying on google to push users to their sites. Without google, 95% of news sites would never get any traffic at all. That's why all of their "paywalls" are just idiotic javascript that stops your browser from displaying all the content, even though you have actually downloaded the full content to your browser. You can turn off scripting and read all of their full articles because they've made no effort server side to restrict anything. They do this because if they actually hid their content, google wouldn't recommend their stories to anyone. The action is explicitly displaying that they can't even afford to exist unless they are recommended.
What they're asking for is essentially that google pays them for the favor of making their site relevant.
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I love the genuine blow back to it. not even a hint of irony on the part of the biggest r-slurs ever.
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what did National Post say? they are usually pretty chuddy
but any org wants gov gibs
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Didn't catch their opinion on that, sadly
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I’m so confused about this. All these sites do is link to the articles right? The sites still get the clicks and ad views. Why is this suddenly a controversy?
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also:
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This doesn't make any sense because all boomers do on FB is post or comment on news articles
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Also the sheer hubris of recouping business losses to your "competitor" via legislation
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…which they will then send back to the UK because Canada is a land of cucks still ruled by the green tooth king lol
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I think this is based on the same logic that had them add a cost to blank media. All sales of blank cassettes, CDs and I think DVDs had some portion sent back to the canadian recording industry to make up for theoretical losses due to piracy.
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well I for one don't read the news, you can comment without clicking
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I thought these laws in Canada/Australia were about republishing the news in a walled garden like Facebook so readers never make it to the newspapers' own websites. How the frick has it been written to cover search results?
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I of course hate megacorporations for their many terrible domestic activities and constant assaults on our freedoms, but as an American I proudly stand behind Google, Facebook, and other multibillion dollar American tech companies in their fight against whatever new r-sluration foreigners may be trying to impose on AMERICAN companies and will stand up for their right to ignore stupid foreigner laws. Leafs, Europoors, remember who owns you!
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wait
does this law say google has to pay local news if their articles show up in search results?
because what the actual frick what r-slur thought that was a good idea
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Yes they're trying to make them pay for links. They're that r-slurred.
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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA GOOGLE IS STEALING CONTENT FROM NEWS ORGANIZATIONS BY HAVING THEIR STUFF SHOW UP IN SEARCH RESULTS?!
please tell me this is one of you and someone isn't really this r-slurred
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The people suggesting other search engines are missing the point of “we will demand search engines pay us money”
Follower of Christ Tech lover, IT Admin, heckin pupper lover and occasionally troll. I hold back feelings or opinions, right or wrong because I dislike conflict.
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Does this leaf thing Google and Meta are Canadian companies?
Follower of Christ Tech lover, IT Admin, heckin pupper lover and occasionally troll. I hold back feelings or opinions, right or wrong because I dislike conflict.
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Wow I bet some plucky leaf startup eats Google's lunch over this and all the local news outlets start minting millionaires.
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Snapshots:
archive.org
ghostarchive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/29/1185087587/google-says-it-will-start-blocking-canadian-news-stories-in-response-to-new-law:
archive.org
ghostarchive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/google-canada-law-online-news-c-18-bill-news-links-rcna91882:
archive.org
ghostarchive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66056742:
archive.org
ghostarchive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
https://old.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/14mhmrz/google_set_to_remove_news_links_in_canada_meta/?sort=controversial:
undelete.pullpush.io
archive.org
ghostarchive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/14mdalq/google_to_remove_news_links_in_canada_in_response/?sort=controversial:
undelete.pullpush.io
archive.org
ghostarchive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
https://old.reddit.com/r/ontario/comments/14mc3ub/google_to_remove_news_links_in_canada_in_response/?sort=controversial:
undelete.pullpush.io
archive.org
ghostarchive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/14mawzm/google_set_to_remove_news_links_in_canada_over/?sort=controversial:
undelete.pullpush.io
archive.org
ghostarchive.org
archive.ph (click to archive)
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We need to annex Canada. The joke has gone on long enough
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God please. I don't care if you annex us just nuke Montreal twice, Toronto three times, and Vancouver enough times to make sure nobody is alive
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I love when America's small vassal states try to push some stupid regulation on American companies and they just reply "lol frick that we're leaving"
Our northern province getting a little uppity.
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tl;dr
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