OAN’s James Meyers
7:37 AM – Thursday, November 30, 2023
Google has agreed to pay $100 million annually to Canadian publishers as part of a deal with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to avoid a news blackout.
The billion dollar tech company made the agreement with Canadian officials, which means Canadian news outlets would receive payments from Google in exchange for content being made available on its search engine, according to a report by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Wednesday.
The deal comes after months of negotiations took place with an approaching December 19th deadline to comply with Canada’s Online News Act, which requires compensation from digital platforms with 20 million monthly users and annual revenues of more than $1 billion.
Additionally, Google and Facebook are the only two brands that meet the criteria.
Google had also threatened to block Canadian news sites from its search results if the law came into effect.
Furthermore, in the agreement Google said they will be allowed to negotiate with the news organizations as a whole instead of each one individually, in fears of paying more money if negotiated individually.
The $100 million agreement fell short of the requested $172 million the Canadian government was seeking from the tech billion dollar company.
Other tech giant Meta had said no to the Canadian government’s demand, claiming the Online News Act “is based on the incorrect premise that Meta benefits unfairly from news content shared on our platforms, when the reverse is true.”
Trudeau has been critical of Meta claiming they are “bad for democracy” after Facebook blocked news stories about the devastating wildfires in Canada over the summer.
The same model was based on the same laws that were made in Australia.
Eventually, Google and Meta reached an agreement with Australian news publishers by consenting to paying for content.
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