Angry about a bill in the USA, Google makes the Californian press invisible

Unsplash Google decides to make articles from Californian media invisible in order to launch an offensive mute.

Since Friday, April 12, Google has decided to make articles from Californian media invisible in order to carry out a silent offensive. Indeed, the American giant is responding to a bill aimed at making platforms pay a commission to media outlets in order to take up their content. 

In order to guarantee the “preservation of journalism in California (CJPA)”, This text would force the most powerful technology companies, such as those from GAFAM, to pay back part of their advertising revenue from journalistic content in order to participate in the health of the environment, such as remunerating the use they make of it. This law would then echo the one existing in the European Union concerning neighboring rights, voted in 2019. 

Google then uses its Chrome search engine to use force to demonstrate the power it can have over the visibility of content. Mike McGuire, co-author of the bill and president of the California State Senate, criticizes what he considers to be “violent intimidation “. The press in the United States is experiencing a real decline and cannot afford such measures on its digital visibility. With the closure of nearly 130 publications in 2023 alone, the local press is constantly shrinking and fears for its survival. The Internet represents a means of renewal, however this cannot be done by the absence of remuneration for the content that journalists provide to expand the use of the search engine.  

While the profession is running out of steam, the shares of the digital advertising market captured by Google and Meta continue to increase, reaching today 80% of advertisers' spending. Such benefits, while both should work together to enable their mutual profitability, suggest that the American technology services company is only extracting the work of journalists without rewarding their work at its fair value, namely ensuring the sustainability of the media. 

The vice president of global partnerships at Google expresses more clearly in a press release that “we believe that the CJPA is harmful to information in California” and that then “If adopted in its current form, the CJPA would create a level of commercial uncertainty that no company could accept”. So the Friday shutdown would be just a “test” to prove what “impact […] the legislation [would] on our product experience”.  

These measures are still drastic and may seem unfair in light of the agreements reached between Google and other countries. Indeed, in France an agreement has been concluded since 2022, allowing information content that appears among search engine results or on other services to be subject to remuneration. A remuneration agreement has also been established across the Atlantic with Canada. From the United States, more than a step ? 

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