Google blocks news from Canadian sites in its searches

Posted On: March 6, 2023

“That explains everything about my Google searches this week,” one reporter wrote.

A Invoice which is underway in Canada requires platforms such as Google and Meta to negotiate payments with newspaper publishers when they publish their content. Google, which opposes the lawtests blocking news in search.

canadian media published February 21:

“The company [Google] said Wednesday it was temporarily limiting access to news content to less than 4% of its Canadian users as it weighs possible responses to the bill. The change applies to its ubiquitous search engine, as well as the Discover feature on Android devices, which brings news and sports coverage. All types of news content are affected by the test, which will last about 5 weeks, the company said. This includes content created by Canadian broadcasters and newspapers.

The tests “limit the visibility of Canadian and international news to varying degrees”according informed google for Reuters.

Bill C-18, called the Online News Act, is modeled on legislation passed in Australia in 2021. The PL, which has already been debated in the hemicycle and passed in the senate, demands that the platforms »facilitate” access to news and links to search results to compensate news publishers.

To get more information from both sides, we published an article in 2022 showing how the bill could be changed. Josh Benton called the law passed in Australia since “a twisted system that rewards bad things and lies about the real value of information”. Canadian academic Michael Geist wrote reviews on the project as well as a Canadian journalist and former director of the Wikimedia Foundation Sue Gardner. David Skok, CEO of the Canadian news site The logic, calls him A “a necessary evil to maintain balance in Canada’s media”.

A spokesperson for the Department of Canadian Heritage, whose Minister Pablo Rodriguez is one of the sponsors of Bill C-18, criticized Google’s decision, telling the globe and mail: “At the end of the day, all we ask of the tech giants is that they pay journalists when they use their work”.

This is not the first time that platforms have tested the blocking of information in countries where it is threatened: the company led aexperience” similar in Australia in January 2021. In February 2021, Facebook temporarily blocked Australian users from sharing national or international news sites, causing blows autumn. The goal he said that he is ready to do the same in Canada.

*Laura Hazard Owen is a staff writer at the Nieman Journalism Lab.

The text was translated by Natália Veloso. Read the original on English.

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