Google announced it will block California news for an unspecified number of Californians. The move is in response to the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), which the tech giant has been fighting for years. Called the “link tax,” the state law would require Google and other similar tech companies to pay outlets for their news coverage.
What is the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA)?
The law is intended to help news organizations make money as the industry struggles with recent layoffs. The bill is described as a “journalism usage fee” and is intended to support not only publishers but also journalists and staff. The most recent recent draft of the bill states “digital journalism provider to spend at least 70% of funds received pursuant to the act on news journalists and support staff.”
Why is Google blocking California news?
While the bill is intended to help support journalism, Google doesn’t see it that way.
It would favor media conglomerates and hedge funds—who’ve been lobbying for this bill—and could use funds from CJPA to continue to buy up local California newspapers, strip them of journalists, and create more ghost papers that operate with a skeleton crew to produce only low-cost, and often low-quality, content.” Writes Jaffer Zaidi, the Vice President of Global News Partnerships at Google, in a recent blog post.
Google has stated they are in a testing phase of removing links to California News to prepare for the potential impact of the law. Zaidi also stated in his post that Google would pause investing in California News. It’s still unclear exactly how news outlets and Californians will be impacted.
This is the first time a bill like this has been proposed, and Google responded similarly in the past. When a similar law was introduced in Canada, Google threatened to block Canadian news. The tech company was able to reach an agreement with the Canadian government before following through but agreed to pay tens of millions annually to the Canadian news industry.