“The testing process involves removing links to California news websites, potentially covered by CJPA, to measure the impact of the legislation on our product experience.”
California’s Journalism Preservation Act would make Google pay a fee for linking Californians to news. Google answered by pulling California news links for some users and pausing its investment in the state’s news ecosystem. It calls this a test. It ran the same play in Spain in 2014 and in Australia in 2020, and caved in Australia. A 2023 study puts what Google would owe US publishers under a national bill at $10 to 12 billion a year, which explains the hostage taking.