Google to Limit Access to California News Sites Amid Fight With State Lawmakers
liar writes:
https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/google-to-limit-access-to-california-news-sites-19400406.php
Google announced Friday that it will temporarily remove links to news websites in California for a small number of users, representing an escalation in the Bay Area tech giant's fight with state lawmakers over a bill authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, a Democrat from Oakland.
At issue is Assembly Bill 886, officially called the "California Journalism Preservation Act." The measure, which Wicks introduced last year, would require large platforms like Google to pay websites for articles the platforms feature on their sites. Critics of the measure, like the California Taxpayers Association, have called the bill a "link tax."
Jaffer Zaidi, Google's vice president of global news partnerships, said in a Friday blog post that the company will begin testing the possible ramifications of the bill's passage on its "product experience" by temporarily removing links to California news websites for "a small percentage of users." That means links to California news websites, like SFGATE, may not appear in Google searches for some users.
[...] Wicks' bill is meant to provide a financial lifeline for news outlets that have struggled to compete for ad dollars - a major funding source for them - in the digital age. The bill would require online platforms like Google, Facebook and Microsoft to pay online publishers a percentage of the revenue those companies make from selling digital ads alongside the outlet's content.
The "journalism usage fee" would be determined by an arbitration process, and an eligible outlet would have to spend at least 70% of the new dollars on hiring additional journalists and support staff.
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