Google to Limit Access to California News Sites

(Photo by PAU BARRENA/AFP via Getty Images)

Google announced Friday that it will be removing links to California news sites from its search results for some users as the tech giant fights a proposed legislation that would require them to compensate publishers.

If passed, bill AB 886, known as the California Journalism Preservation Act, would mandate tech companies pay news outlets a “journalism usage fee” when they sell advertising that appears alongside news content.

Responding publicly to the bill via blog post, the vice president of Global News Partnerships at Google, Jaffer Zaidi, said the bill is “the wrong approach to supporting journalism.” Zaidi warned that if Gov. Gavin Newsom signs the bill, it may result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers.”

Google said it will be initiating a “test for a small percentage of California users” to “measure the impact of the legislation on our product experience.”

In the wake of large layoffs by The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, supporters of the bill claim it will aide struggling news outlets as print journalism fades. Opponents of the bill say that only the large established media conglomerates will benefit further ostracizing the small-town local newspapers.

Zaidi said that the CJPA would “create more ghost papers that operate with a skeleton crew to produce only low-cost, and often low-quality, content. CJPA would also put small publishers at a disadvantage and limit consumers’ access to a diverse local media ecosystem.”

The CJPA was introduced in July of 2023 but was put on hold for a year by Democrat Assembly member Buffy Wicks who wanted to make “sure this bill does exactly, and only, what it intends: to support our free press and the democracy sustained by it, to make sure publications get paid what they are owed, and to hold our nation’s largest and wealthiest tech companies accountable for repurposing content that’s not theirs.”

In Canada, a similar law has already gone into effect. The Online News Act, passed in June 2023, requires social media platforms to pay news outlets to share their content. As a result, Canadians can no longer share news articles on Facebook and Instagram.