Some expected that new draft regulations released by the Trudeau government this week would see tech giants like Google and Meta reverse their positions, however on Tuesday, Google announced that will not be the case.
While news content will still remain searchable on Google’s website and other products for the time being, a spokesperson for the company said that Google will “await the publication of final regulations” regarding the Online News Act before making a decision on pulling news.
The draft regulations underwent a 30-day comment period for feedback and proposed changes, which has now come to a close.
“Unfortunately, the proposed regulations fail to sufficiently address the critical structural problems with C-18 that regrettably were not dealt with during the legislative process,” said a Google spokesperson.
The company said that they were prepared to pull Canadian news content from Google Search as well as their other platforms as a result of Bill C-18 passing through legislation.
“We continue to have serious concerns that the core issues ultimately may not be solvable through regulation and that legislative changes may be necessary,” the spokesperson continued.
Conversely, the office of Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge, believes that a deal can still be reached under the current legislation.
“We remain confident that we can work constructively to address questions or concerns through the regulatory process,” said a spokesperson for St-Onge’s office.
“We look forward to reviewing the submissions while working collaboratively with tech platforms, news organizations and Canadians before finalizing the regulations.”
The Online News Act forces Google and Meta to pay Canadian news outlets for their content when users post and share news links and articles.
Both Meta and Google have confirmed that their business models aren’t set up to make profit off of the content that their users post.
The new legislation will cost them enormous sums of money that they are not making through the news content being shared and have since decided it made more sense for them to remove news content and links altogether, as a way to be compliant with the law.
The Online News Act will come into effect by the end of 2023.
Meta has already begun blocking news in Canada on its two major social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram. Meta said that further regulations would not be the solution to their concerns, according to the National Post.
Part of the recent draft regulations includes a formula to calculate the extent of revenue earned by Google and Meta in order to determine how much they would have to reimburse Canadian news publishers for their content.
The initial estimates for Google have been a pay out of $172 million and $62 million for Facebook.
Google has stated that such legislation exposes them to “uncapped financial liability” as the Canadian government’s formula for estimating how much the platforms are expected to pay out is currently only the minimum amount.
The company is also demanding further transparency on how platforms would be able to receive exemptions from the legislation by launching their own deals with publishers.
Among the list of concerns shared by the tech giant on Tuesday, Google noted their dismay with the fact that the draft regulations grant news publishers veto power over exemptions.
The company said that more changes will need to be made to the legislation if the government expects them to stop pulling news content from their platforms by the end of the year.
