#Google Strikes $100M Online News Sharing Deal With Canada After Standoff

Canada has struck a $100 million deal with Google to pay local publishers for news snippets shared or repurposed on its local platform.

The agreement for Google to make an annual payment of $100 million follows Canada passing into law Bill C-18, also known as the Online News Act, to compel U.S. digital giants to negotiate commercial licensing deals with Canadian publishers for their local platforms.

“We have found a path forward to answer Google’s questions about their process and the Act. Google wanted certainty about the amount of compensation it would have to pay to Canadian news outlets,” Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge said in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

“As part of this framework, Google will contribute $100 million in financial support annually, indexed to inflation, for a wide range of news businesses across the country, including independent news businesses and those from Indigenous and official-language minority communities. Google will have the option to work with a single collective to distribute its contribution to all interested eligible news businesses based on the number of full-time equivalent journalists engaged by those businesses,” the federal minister added in a separate statement.

Rival U.S. tech giant Meta has so far balked in striking its own deal with the Canadian government and continues to block Canadians from viewing or sharing news on its Facebook and Instagram sites north of the border.

On Wednesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the House of Commons urged Meta to follow suit and pay local news publishers for access to their content. “Unfortunately, Meta continues to complete abdicate any responsibility towards democratic institutions and even stability, but we’re going to continue to work positively in those areas,” Trudeau said.

Alphabet’s Google in a blog on Wednesday welcomed the deal with Canada after that tech giant also pulled the plug on local news sharing north of the border. 

“Following extensive discussions, we are pleased that the Government of Canada has committed to addressing our core issues with Bill C-18, which included the need for a streamlined path to an exemption at a clear commitment threshold. While we work with the government through the exemption process based on the regulations that will be published shortly, we will continue sending valuable traffic to Canadian publishers,” Google Canada stated.

Passage of Bill C-18 is part of an ongoing revamp of Canada’s media regulatory regime that imposes first-time rules and obligations on American digital platforms operating locally and with outsized market muscle as competition from foreign online platforms continues to put local broadcasters and news publishers under pressure.

The country recently passed into law Bill C-11, also known as the Online Streaming Act, which will force digital platforms like Netflix, Disney+ and Spotify for the first time to subsidize local content.

Another round of negotiations in Ottawa is taking place as the CRTC, the country’s media regulator, holds hearings on a new framework to ensure foreign streaming giants invest in local film and TV production, and also define how deep the Americans will dip into their pockets to do so.

The CRTC similarly oversees the Online News Act and bargaining between the U.S. digital platforms and Canadian news publishers, which follows similar legislation in Australia where Meta also blocked news content from reaching local users before establishing a fund to compensate local publishers.