Google paying Canadian media $100M for news
Deal established a fairer commercial relationship between digital platforms and journalism in Canada
The Canadian government and Google announced Wednesday a “historic” deal that will see the search engine giant pay local media 100 million Canadian dollars yearly for news used on its platforms.
The deal heads off an imminent threat by the digital giant to block news on its platform in response to Ottawa’s Online News Act, which is due to come into force on 19 December.
“Today, I’m announcing that we have found a path forward with Google” to implement the Online News Act, Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge told a news conference in Ottawa.
“This is a historic development. It will establish a fairer commercial relationship between digital platforms and journalism in Canada,” she said.
Sources, earlier, told Agence France-Presse the two sides agreed on a framework that would establish regular payments by Google to help Canadian media.
St-Onge said it would see Canadian news continue to be shared on Google’s platforms in return for the annual payments.
The amount is less than the government had estimated the compensation should be, but heads off a potential online blackout for news in Canada, where Google and Meta are the dominating platforms.
The agreement will give Google the option to negotiate with a single group representing all Canadian media, rather than seeking to secure one-on-one deals that it feared risked opening it up to massive payouts.
Google ‘will continue sending valuable traffic to Canadian publishers.’
The money would then be divided up based on the number of full-time journalists employed by each publisher and broadcaster.
Google global affairs president Kent Walker said the company was “pleased that the government of Canada has committed to addressing our core issues with Bill C-18.”
As a result, he said Google “will continue sending valuable traffic to Canadian publishers.”
“This is a good outcome, for sure,” Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, told AFP.
Marla Boltman, head of the citizen group Friends, also welcomed the “muchneeded cash injection into the Canadian media sector.”
Blocked access
The Online News Act builds on similar legislation introduced in Australia and aims to support a struggling Canadian news sector that has seen a flight of advertising dollars.
According to the draft regulations unveiled in September, it would apply to companies with global annual revenues in excess of Can$1 billion, operating a search engine or social media platform actively used by at least 20 million users and that distributes news.
That effectively means only Google and Meta would be affected.
Meta and Google, which together control about 80 percent of all advertising revenue in Canada, worth billions of dollars, have been accused of draining cash away from traditional news organizations while using news content for free.
Ottawa had estimated the Online News Act could cost the pair a combined Can$230 million (US$170 million) by requiring them to make commercial deals with Canadian news outlets, or face binding arbitration.
Meta has called the bill “fundamentally flawed” and since August has blocked access in Canada to news articles on its Facebook and Instagram platforms.