An update on Canada’s Bill C-18 and our Search and News products

The Canadian Government has passed a new law known as Bill C-18, which requires two companies to pay for simply displaying links to news, a common practice that is usually free for everyone. This decision referred to as the "link tax," has raised concerns for our products and could potentially expose us to unlimited financial liability for merely facilitating Canadians' access to news from local publishers. For over a year, we have expressed our belief that this approach is not the right way to support journalism in Canada and may lead to significant product changes.

We have informed the Government that, unfortunately, we will have to remove links to Canadian news from our Search, News, and Discover products in Canada once the law takes effect. Additionally, Bill C-18 will make it unfeasible for us to continue offering our Google News Showcase product in Canada.

We are disappointed to reach this point and want to emphasize that this decision and its consequences were not taken lightly. We believe it is essential to be transparent with Canadian publishers and our users as soon as possible.

Our efforts to improve Bill C-18 have been ongoing. We already support Canadian journalism through our programs and partnerships and have made it clear that we are willing to do more. With our Google News Showcase program, we have negotiated agreements with over 150 news publications across Canada. Last year alone, we linked to Canadian news publications over 3.6 billion times at no charge, helping publishers generate revenue through ads and new subscriptions. This referral traffic from links has been valued at $250 million CAD annually. We want to continue supporting Canadian journalism, but we cannot do so in a way that disrupts the functioning of the web and search engines and creates uncertainty for our products and finances.

Since the introduction of Bill C-18 last year, we have shared our experiences from other countries, warning that impractical legislation could lead to changes affecting the availability of news on Google's products in Canada.

Throughout this process, we have worked collaboratively with governments and news publishers worldwide, fostering thousands of mutually beneficial agreements with news publications globally. We tried to apply the same approach to Bill C-18, offering constructive feedback and suggesting solutions that would have made it more workable for both platforms and publishers, thus providing more financial support to Canadian journalism. We also supported the idea of an independent fund for Canadian journalism, backed by both platforms and the Government, a model that has proven successful elsewhere. We presented our recommendations to the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage and the Senate Committee on Transport and Communications on multiple occasions.

For over a year, we advocated for reasonable and balanced amendments to the legislation, but none of our suggestions were accepted.

Recently, as the Bill was nearing final passage and Royal Assent, the Government agreed to discuss addressing some critical issues, a gesture we welcomed. In those discussions, we sought clarity on the financial expectations platforms would face for simply linking to news, as well as a clear and viable path for exemption based on our news support programs and commercial agreements with publishers.

While we appreciate the Government's recognition that our concerns were reasonable and that the law won't apply until implementing regulations are adopted, we still lack sufficient certainty that the regulatory process will resolve the structural issues in the legislation, such as mandatory payment for links and unlimited financial liability.

Moving forward, we plan to participate in the regulatory process and will continue to be transparent with Canadians and publishers. We hope that the Government can outline a viable path forward. Otherwise, we remain concerned that Bill C-18 will hinder Canadians from accessing news online, make it challenging for journalists to reach their audiences, and diminish valuable free web traffic for Canadian publishers.

Source- https://blog.google/intl/en-ca/company-news/outreach-initiatives/an-update-on-canadas-bill-c-18-and-our-search-and-news-products/