After Meta, Google. Ulcerated by the passage of Ottawa’s Online News Act, which it calls “unenforceable”, the web giant announced Thursday that it would remove links to Canadian news from its search engine for users in Canada. For his part, Meta continues to crack down, slashing the funding that was granted to La Presse Canadienne in order to finance journalist positions within the news agency.
Another tile falls on the Canadian government: to that of Meta, which announced last week its intention to permanently end the sharing of Canadian news content in protest against the passage of the law, added that from Google.
“The government has given us no reason to believe that the regulatory process will be able to solve the structural problems of the legislation,” Kent Walker, president of Global Affairs at Google (Alphabet), said in a blog post on Thursday.
Therefore, “we have informed the government that when the law comes into force, we will unfortunately have to remove links to Canadian news from our Canadian search, news and discovery products,” he explained.
The law will also “make it untenable for us to continue to offer our Google News Showcase Product in Canada,” the senior executive continued, expressing “disappointment” that it came to this and saying that the decision, like its “impacts,” will not was not “taken lightly”.
Company executives met with Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez last week. The latter had praised their collaboration as well as their proposals “based on common sense”, portraying them as more constructive players than Meta.
His cabinet had not yet reacted to Google’s affront on Thursday afternoon.
The deputy leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP), Alexandre Boulerice, for his part, has given a string of criticisms to qualify the behavior of digital multinationals: “predators”, “raptors”, “bullies”, he hammered in interview.
“Who do they think they are, these people? All the same, you have to have your head full in order to despise and flout the laws that have been passed by Parliament […] We will not back down, and we will encourage our friends in the Liberal Party to show so much firmness,” he continued.
The NDP and the Bloc Québécois supported Bill C-18. The Conservative Party voted against.
Another web giant unhappy with the legislation, Meta, continued to hit back.
“Meta has notified us of its intention to terminate the agreement that supports the news exchanges,” wrote Malcolm Kirk, president of La Presse Canadienne, Thursday, in a message to employees, indicating that the current agreements will be honored until their end.
The day before, it was the Canadian groups having concluded agreements with Facebook concerning remuneration in exchange for the use of journalistic content who learned the bad news. The National Independent Information Cooperative (CN2i), which brings together six Quebec regional dailies, has publicly confirmed the end of its agreement.
According to our information, similar announcements were made by the American giant’s other partners, including daily newspapers such as Le Devoir, the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail.
Meta refuses to comment publicly on the fate of these agreements.
On its website, La Presse Canadienne explains that its partnership with the Californian multinational aimed to fund eight journalist positions across its offices in the country.
“Other financial and operational implications should be carefully considered and we’ll talk more about that later,” Kirk told news agency staff.
These decisions by the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp come about a week after the passage of Bill C-18 aimed at forcing web giants to enter into retribution agreements with the media whose content they publish.
Mark Zuckerberg’s company immediately reacted by announcing that media content would be blocked for its 24 million Facebook and Instagram users in the country.
This should happen before the law comes into force, in about six months.