In response to the California legislature’s considering of a new law that would require large tech companies to compensate media companies with a percentage of advertising revenue in exchange for linking to content, Google ran a “short-term test for a small percentage of users” that removed California news websites from search results.
In a blog post, Google said the change was to measure the impact of the potential legislation on the company’s “product experience.” The company also said it would halt new investments in the California news industry.
“By helping people find news stories, we help publishers of all sizes grow their audiences at no cost to them. (This bill) would up-end that model,” Jaffer Zaidi, Google’s vice president for global news partnerships, wrote in the blog post.
The law would apply to other tech giants, such as Facebook and Microsoft, too. The amount the tech company would have to pay the media organization would be determined through an arbitration process involving a panel of three judges.
