Google is removing links to California news websites in reaction to proposed state legislation requiring big tech companies to pay news outlets for their content, the company announced Friday in a blog post.
Google, which is a subsidiary of Alphabet (GOOGL), wrote the move would affect only a small percentage of California users, and is intended as a “test,” allowing the company to gauge “the impact of the legislation on our product experience.”
The California Journalism Preservation Act, which was introduced in March 2023 and is still awaiting a hearing by the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee, would require digital platforms like Google and Meta to pay a “journalism usage fee” to eligible news outlets when they use their content alongside digital ads.
Meta has not returned CNN’s request for comment.
The bill comes as more people have shifted away from finding and consuming news though traditional media and toward social and online platforms. The legislation was introduced amid fears the companies’ news aggregation practices will siphon users away from news websites, which have sounded the alarm about how platforms have gained increasingly unfettered control over the content they allow users to see.
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