Canada’s Online News Act: The Fallout Continues, As Google Will Block News Links, Other Support Programs

This isn’t a huge surprise, as they’d already suggested they would do this, but Google has announced officially that it will block news links in Canada to avoid having to pay to send traffic to Canadian news sources.

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, and that C-18 will also make it untenable for us to continue offering our Google News Showcase product in Canada.

The company goes on to note all the ways in which it had been supporting journalism in Canada, nearly all of which it will now stop because of the pure stupidity and open internet-breaking nature of the bill, which demands payments for linking to news, going against the fundamental principle of the web.

We already pay to support Canadian journalism through our programs and partnerships – and we’ve been clear we’re prepared to do more. As part of our Google News Showcase program, we have negotiated agreements covering over 150 news publications across Canada. Last year alone, we linked to Canadian news publications more than 3.6 billion times — at no charge — helping publishers make money through ads and new subscriptions. This referral traffic from links has been valued at $250 million CAD annually. We’re willing to do more; we just can’t do it in a way that breaks the way that the web and search engines are designed to work, and that creates untenable product and financial uncertainty.

Ever since the Government introduced C-18 last year, we have shared our experiences in other countries and been clear that unworkable legislation could lead to changes that affect the availability of news on Google’s products in Canada.

We have successfully collaborated with Governments and news publishers around the world on the shared goal of strengthening the news industry, and we currently have thousands of mutually beneficial agreements with news publications around the world.

We tried to take this same approach with Bill C-18. We repeatedly offered constructive feedback and recommended solutions that would have made it more workable for both platforms and publishers, unlocking further financial support for Canadian journalism. We also endorsed the alternative model of an independent fund for Canadian journalism supported by both platforms and the Government, an approach that’s worked elsewhere. We appeared several times before the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications and submitted detailed recommendations to both committees.

We advocated for reasonable and balanced amendments to the legislation for over a year. None of our suggestions for changes to C-18 were accepted.

This news follows on Meta making a similar announcement a week earlier. For what it’s worth, Meta has also announced that it will be ending the program it had to fund journalism in Canada.

As the fallout from the federal government’s Online News Act continues, Facebook parent Meta is terminating a contract with The Canadian Press that saw the digital giant support the hiring of a limited number of emerging journalists at the national newswire service.

The newswire agency was informed Wednesday that Meta will end the contract, which has funded roughly 30 reporting fellowship positions for early-career journalists at CP since the program’s inception in 2020.

Canadian Press executive editor Gerry Arnold said that in its letter informing the media company of its decision, Meta clearly linked its termination of the program to Canada’s Online News Act, which became law last week.

With all of this going on, even as the Canadian government was very clearly warned about just how damaging C-18 would be, Drew Wilson at Freezenet reported that the government is now scrambling to negotiate (after the bill was passed) on ways to keep Meta and Google allowing news links in Canada.

Of course, that quoted some Google folks saying that they were hopeful for an agreement — and that was before this announcement from Google, so it sounds like the negotiations failed.

Meanwhile, two of Canada’s biggest newspapers, Postmedia (owners of the National Post) and Nordstar (owners of the Toronto Star), are apparently in talks to merge, meaning there would be even less competition and fewer major news orgs in Canada. I’m sure that some would argue that this is why the internet companies need to pay for links, but it actually just reinforces how terribly traditional news orgs have been run in the internet age, where they’ve consistently failed to adapt or figure out how to actually embrace the internet.

And now they want to be paid for their own failures. But, instead, the end result may be that they’re in more trouble because Google and Facebook take away all the benefits they’ve been providing them already.