Google Blocks News in California to Protest Proposed Media Payoff Law

Google is blocking access to news articles for some California users in response to the California Journalism Protection Act, which requires tech giants like Google and Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta to pay publishers for news content. Restrictions have started.

NPR report In a show of its immense power and influence, Google announced Friday that it has begun blocking news articles from California-based news organizations to an unspecified number of state residents who use its search engine. did. The move comes as Google seeks to fight back against the California Journalism Protection Act (CJPA), a state bill it has been fighting over for years.

Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai attended a press event announcing Google as the new official partner of the women’s national team held at Google Berlin. Photo: Christoph Soeder/dpa (Photo Credit: Christoph Soeder/picture Alliance via Getty Images)

CJPA is sponsored by Democratic Congresswoman Buffy Wicks and is aimed at supporting California’s struggling news industry. At least 100 news organizations in the state have closed over the past decade, and more than 20,000 media jobs nationwide have been cut in 2022 alone. Supporters of the bill say it would ensure basic fairness by requiring platforms like Google and Meta, which amass huge profits from digital advertising, to pay them for the news content they consume. are doing. This bears some resemblance to the national JCPA, the media cartel bill that Democrats and Republican establishment parties are relentlessly resurrecting from the dead to control independent media.

But Google has staunchly resisted the bill, arguing that it would be “unworkable” to impose a so-called “link tax” on the company to connect California residents with news articles. Google executive Jafar Zaidi said in a blog post that the CJPA “could lead to significant changes in the services we can provide to Californians and the traffic we can deliver to California publishers.”