The multinational Google is desperately asking senators to modify the Liberal bill on the sharing of its revenues with Canadian media to register more clearly when it finances enough media to be exempt from the law, as in Australia.
“At a minimum, Bill C-18 should include a clear and workable exemption pathway that incentivizes companies like Google to continue supporting Canada’s news ecosystem,” the VP of News said. for Google Canada, Richard Gingras, before the senators in May.
Google officials are stepping up their efforts to do “everything they can” to “desperately seek a constructive plan” to modify this bill, which is currently undergoing its final examination, before the Senate. The Canadian branch of the Californian company, for example, organized a technical briefing on Monday to explain its position to journalists.
In particular, the famous search engine would like to be exempted from the obligation to pay press companies for each link to their articles, as it happened to do in Australia, a country which has adopted a law similar. Canada also provides such an exemption for platforms that conclude enough agreements with press companies, but which is poorly defined according to Google.
“The current exemption criteria are incredibly vague and imprecise, and do not specify how many agreements would suffice,” says his brief tabled in the Senate.
Already agreements
Google argues that it is actually doing the media a big favor by sending them 3.6 billion visits to their websites a year, which it estimates is worth $250 million. The company has also entered into voluntary financial agreements with several newspaper companies in Canada in recent years, including with The duty.
It is the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) that must decide whether this is sufficient to exempt it from financial penalties or compulsory arbitration, for example. The regulator will have to base itself on a series of criteria to judge the overall value of these agreements, in particular to assess whether they are fair and also offered for the production of local and diversified news.
Bill C-18 promises to fund part of the salaries of newsrooms across the country from the revenues of Google and Facebook, which monopolize the bulk of online advertising contracts.During the bill’s review by elected officials, Google came under fire for commissioning a poll that suggested the federal government intended to charge Internet users for searching the Internet.
The text was adopted last December by 213 federal MPs from all parties, including MP Alain Rayes elected under the Conservative banner and his former colleague Dave MacKenzie, who retired shortly after. The rest of the elected Conservatives opposed it. C-18 has since been before the Senate.
Little news value
Google carried out a “test” between February and March aimed at limiting the appearance of news appearing in the search results of approximately 3.3% of Canadian Internet users. It shocked elected officials in Ottawa, but instead inspired another web giant, Meta, to do the same for its Facebook and Instagram platforms.
The results of this test would have demonstrated the low monetary value of SEO for news articles, Google says. News accounts for less than 2% of all searches, and is not of interest to advertisers, the company explains. At most, these web pages have a “social” value for democracy.
Unlike Meta, however, Google is not clearly threatening Parliament to cut Canadian news from its platform if C-18 is passed as such. The company nevertheless mentioned to senators the reassessment of the relevance of its Google News service and its current agreements with Canadian publishers.
Owned by Alphabet, the Google search engine, long known for its “Don’t be evil” slogan, has other complaints against Bill C-18. For example, he wants senators to get rid of the idea of payment by link, contrary to the principle of an “open Web”. He would like a more succinct list of eligible media, purged of college radio and community media.
Finally, Google does not like the arbitration formula presented, and would prefer to be subject to regular commercial arbitration which would leave room for compromise. His favorite model would have been the financing of an independent journalism fund, which would operate much more simply.
In a statement from its spokesperson, Shay Purdy, Google Canada says it feels “a deep responsibility to our Canadian users and the Canadian information ecosystem to find a way to make this work.” The company promises to do everything possible to “avoid a negative outcome for Canadians”.
The Minister of Canadian Heritage, Pablo Rodriguez, for his part, must address the senators on Wednesday on this subject. The government is optimistic that C-18 will become Canadian law in June.