Lawmakers in Canada are working on a new bill that might force Google to pay Canadian publishers for their content. The bill, known as the “Online News Act” or Bill C-18, has targeted big tech companies.
Google has already faced similar cases in France and the EU. The search giant had to sign deals with European publishers to use their content. Likewise, the company might be obligated to sign similar agreements with Canadian publishers. Lawmakers say their goal is to protect publishers.
According to Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez, tech giants must be more transparent and accountable to Canadians. The bill is yet in its early stages and must pass through the Canadian parliament.
Google responds to Canada Bill C-18 by not showing news in the country
The Mountain View-based company is dealing with dire economic predictions for the year ahead and doesn’t want to lose a penny. As per Google’s announcement, they’re testing the blockade of news content on the search results of Canadian users for five weeks. Also, the test is conducted on 4% of users in the country and targets content from Canadian broadcasters and newspapers.
“We’re briefly testing potential product responses to Bill C-18 that impact a very small percentage of Canadian users,” Google said. “We run thousands of tests each year to assess any potential changes to Search. We’ve been fully transparent about our concern that C-18 is overly broad and, if unchanged, could impact products Canadians use and rely on every day.”
Google’s innovations, like Featured snippets, prevent users from visiting websites to reach the answer. The answer for a query mostly appears on the same search page, and users don’t need the necessity to read the full text. Publishers are against this, arguing that Featured snippets are stealing website visitors. Bill C-18 hopes to solve this dispute between Google and publishers. It aims to force the search giant to pay for the content if it’s not sending visitors to the website.
2023-02-26 15:09:01