Google defends restricting access, calls for changes to C-18

Senior executives of Alphabet Inc.’s Google appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage Thursday to discuss the Online News Act, Bill C-18. They defended a test which restricted access to news feeds and called for the establishment of a journalism fund to pay eligible news organizations. Kent Walker, president of global affairs for the web giant, and Richard Gingras, the vice president of news, had been asked to appear before the committee weeks ago. In March Canadian representatives of the company testified. Walker stressed that Google has been operating in Canada for more than two decades and employs 3,000 people. It has made over $16 million in contributions to charities since establishing operations here. “Our commitment to Canada includes engaging constructively on regulation and policy innovation which sometimes means identifying challenges to proposals that we believe may not achieve their stated objectives or that could have negative downstream impacts,” he stated. Gingras said the firm aimed to help both legacy publishers and emerging outlets. “We and many others are concerned with the impact of Bill C-18 on the evolution of journalism in open societies,” he said. “It would make it more difficult for digitally innovative entrepreneurial journalists and publishers to help Canadians understand important issues in their communities.” Walker suggested the legislation should be amended to establish a journalism fund which would use the same standards as the federal government’s Journalism Tax Credit. Google recently signed an agreement with the government of Taiwan for a similar fund. Gingras said that the provisions of the Online News Act would make Canada the first nation in the world to set a price on links. The government denies this. The VP said such actions would cause any company to reconsider its operations in the country. He compared Google to a newsstand that publishers do not have to pay to be on. He worried that C-18 would lead to the proliferation of clickbait and the emergence of less reputable new outlets online. Walker said news stories make up a fraction of the data people research on Google, perhaps less than two per cent. The company does not make money off of such searches. “News has great social value but in many cases it doesn’t have much economic value,” he told the committee. Gingras said Google has signed agreements with roughly 100 Canadian news companies to pay for information. In Australia, where similar legislation was passed, Google has contracts with around 200 firms. Some of those deals were signed before the Australian bill was passed into law, Walker added. The executives were asked how their company would react if the United States proposed a law similar to the Canadian bill. MPs particularly wanted to know if tests restricting access would be employed. “If the facts were all the same, then our considerations would be similar, if not identical,” Gingras stated. Both Walker and Gingras insisted that the tests last winter were done entirely at random. Although there were anecdotal reports of journalists losing access to news stories, the tech executives said there was no deliberate plan to target certain sectors or segments of the population. The tests used IP addresses to decide who would be subject to the tests. Gingras said at no time did Google highlight some news organizations over others. The Canadian testing was in line with tests conducted in other countries around the world, including Australia. The Google executives could not provide concrete numbers on how many Canadians were affected by the testing but conceded that MPs’ estimations of 1.2 million users were probably correct. Walker said he would not speculate on what the company’s final actions will be if C-18 passes in its current form. –Reporting by Paul Park at ppark@thewirereport.ca and editing by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca.

Google defends restricting access, calls for changes to C-18

Broadcast | April 21, 2023

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Google defends restricting access, calls for changes to C-18

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