Google joined Meta and announced Thursday that it would block access to the news from Canada. Big Tech is taking a stand against the law passed by the Canadian Senate a few weeks ago. The law would force these large companies to pay Canadian media outlets to include their links on the main servers of these providers. Neither Meta nor Google are willing to comply with this.
For that reason, on the same day the law was passed, Zuckerberg's company announced that it would remove access to Canadian news. A week later, and after analyzing the situation, Google made the same decision, claiming that it was "unworkable" to abide by the law passed by Parliament. Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs for Google and Alphabet (Google's parent company) said:
Bill C-18 has become law and remains unworkable. The government has not given us reason to believe that the regulatory process will be able to resolve structural issues with the legislation. 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.
Along with this, the company announced that it will also cancel all agreements it had with Canadian news companies. According to them, this new law only applies to two companies (Google and Meta). They would be the only two large companies that would have to pay, which is something they have been trying to avoid for a year:
The unprecedented decision to put a price on links (a so-called “link tax”) creates uncertainty for our products and exposes us to uncapped financial liability simply for facilitating Canadians’ access to news from Canadian publishers. We have been saying for over a year that this is the wrong approach to supporting journalism in Canada and may result in significant changes to our products.
For this reason, both companies decided to join forces and make the same decision. This will affect all Canadians who will no longer be able to get information either through Google or through Facebook and Instagram, Meta's main platforms.
