Google to limit access to California news sites amid fight with state lawmakers – By Alec Regimbal (SFGate) / April 12, 2024
Google announced Friday that it will temporarily remove links to news websites in California for a small number of users, representing an escalation in the Bay Area tech giant’s fight with state lawmakers over a bill authored by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, a Democrat from Oakland.
At issue is Assembly Bill 886, officially called the “California Journalism Preservation Act.” The measure, which Wicks introduced last year, would require large platforms like Google to pay websites for articles the platforms feature on their sites. Critics of the measure, like the California Taxpayers Association, have called the bill a “link tax.”
Jaffer Zaidi, Google’s vice president of global news partnerships, said in a Friday blog post that the company will begin testing the possible ramifications of the bill’s passage on its “product experience” by temporarily removing links to California news websites for “a small percentage of users.” That means links to California news websites, like SFGATE, may not appear in Google searches for some users.
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