Canada’s standoff with tech giants Google and Meta over their use of national news content has eased on one front, as the federal government announced Wednesday it had reached a deal with Google to compensate publishers in Canada.
The deal comes just weeks before a national law takes effect that will require tech companies to pay news outlets for using their online content.
Under the agreement, Google will provide $73.5 million, or C$100 million, annually to news organizations, including independent news outlets, indigenous media and multilingual media.
The funds will be distributed based on the number of workers employed by each qualifying news organization, government officials said. (Last quarter, Alphabet reported revenue of $76.7 billion.)
“This is a historic development,” said Pascale St-Onge, Canada’s heritage minister, whose agency helps oversee regulation of the technology. “It will establish a more equitable business relationship between digital platforms and journalism in Canada,” she said, adding that the new revenue is “good for the news industry.”
“Following extensive discussions, we are pleased that the Government of Canada is committed to addressing our key issues,” Kent Walker, president of global affairs at Google and Alphabet, said in a statement.
The government’s talks with Meta remain at an impasse.
Canada’s national public broadcaster, CBC, said it was “very pleased” with the deal and believes it is an encouraging financial development for other news companies, Leon Mar, a spokesman, said in an email.
Canada’s online news law, modeled on a similar law in Australia, has faced a backlash from tech companies, including Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, and in August began blocking news content from people’s feeds. Canadian users.
Meta argued that the law was based on a flawed premise that the company would unfairly benefit from hosting news platforms and said this generated huge readership for media companies.
The law comes into force at a time when the news industry in Canada, as in much of the world, is shrinking under pressure from falling advertising revenues and dependent on social networks for much of its readership.
In reaching a deal with Google, Canadian officials said they were following similar negotiations between other governments and the tech company. Germany recently announced a 3.2 million euro agreement with Google involving German newspapers.
“If a better deal is reached elsewhere in the world, Canada reserves the right to reopen the regulation,” St-Onge said.
Google also threatened to block access to news in Canada, but agreed to continue negotiations with the government. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said talks with Meta have stalled.
“Unfortunately, Meta continues to completely abdicate any responsibility to democratic institutions and even stability,” he told reporters in Ottawa on Wednesday.