"Bill C-18 will make it harder for Canadians to find news online, make it harder for journalists to reach their audiences, and reduce valuable free web traffic to Canadian publishers."
On Thursday, Google announced that in response to the Trudeau Liberals' Online News Act, Bill C-18, it would be removing links to Canadian news from a number of key places on the world's most popular search engine.
When the new law comes into effect, those looking for news from Canadian new publishers will no longer be able to find such content in Google's Search, News, or Discover tabs.
"Bill C-18 has become law and remains unworkable," Google said in a statement. "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."
The company went on to state that it was "concerned" that the law would "make it harder for Canadians to find news online, make it harder for journalists to reach their audiences, and reduce valuable free web traffic to Canadian publishers."
Under Bill C-18, companies like Google would be required to pay a "link tax" every time they link to a Canadian news publisher's website.
Google said that the decision "creates uncertainty for our products and exposes us to uncapped financial liability."
The company slammed the Trudeau Liberals for suggesting that it pay to host Canadian news, pointing out that such stories had been linked to over 3.5 billion times in 2022 alone, at no cost. Referral traffic from the links was valued at around $250 million CAD.
Following the bill's passing, Meta also announced that it would soon stop providing Canadian users with news content.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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