JAKARTA - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday February 24 that Alphabet Inc's Google's attempt to block the news content was a "very bad mistake". This was done by Google in reaction to a Canadian government law that would force the giant technology company to pay publishers in Canada for news content.
Google said this week that it was testing the blocking of access of some Canadian users to the news in a potential response to the Trudeau government's "Online News Act", which is expected to become a law.
If this law is passed, Google should conduct commercial negotiations with news publishers and pay them for the content displayed on their services.
Trudeau, speaking to reporters in Toronto, said that blocking news in Canada was a "disturbing" issue.
"I'm really surprised that Google has decided that it prefers to prevent Canadians from accessing news rather than paying journalists for the jobs they do," Trudeau said.
"I think it was a very bad mistake and I know that Canadian people expect journalists to be well paid for the work they do."
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
"Online News Act," introduced by last year's Liberal Trudeau administration, created rules for platforms like Meta's Facebook and Google to negotiate and pay news publishers.
Facebook has also expressed concern about the law and warned that it may be forced to block sharing news on their platform.
The law was passed by the Canadian People's Council in December 2022 and is currently in an unselected upper house in parliament, which has rarely blocked laws approved by low-principles.
The rule aims to help Canada's news industry, which is calling for technology company regulation, citing increased financial losses while Facebook and Google continue to gain a larger market share of online advertising revenues.
The Ottawa proposal is similar to the law that Australia passed in 2021, which also sparked threats from Google and Facebook to cut their services. The two finally agreed to an agreement with Australian media firms after a series of amendments were made to the law.
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