Blame Silly Politicians For Google Starting To Block News Sites In California

That thing is happening again, where politicians are pushing a bad law that will benefit Rupert Murdoch, while harming the public. Rather than blaming Murdoch or the politicians pushing the law, they’re blaming “big tech” for actually responding to the law accordingly. Because that’s easier. But it’s wrong.

In this case, it’s California’s terrible attempt at a link tax, pushed for by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks. Google is experimenting with removing links to California news publications for California news users, which is exactly what the law demands. But, lots of people are getting mad at Google, when they should be mad at Wicks.

Let’s take a step back to the beginning.

Link taxes are bad, mmkay?

The entire concept is broken and represents an attack on the open internet. They have not worked, contrary to what supporters will tell you. In Australia, often held up as the shining example of link taxes working, smaller publications are laying off journalists and shutting down at a faster pace than before.

If you don’t follow this closely, link taxes are a horrible idea. They were cooked up by Rupert Murdoch because he was mad that his internet ventures were flopping, while Google and Facebook were thriving. The famed faux-free market supporter insisted that if Google and Facebook were making money while he was struggling, it must be because of something “unfair” that they had done: namely become a source that people go to to find links to news stories.

Somehow, Murdoch and friends spun this as “stealing” the news. Except, it’s not. It’s literally linking to news sites and sending traffic to them. And the news orgs clearly value that traffic, because they not only do not block such traffic (which would be easy to do with robots.txt and referral blockers), they actually hire “search engine optimization” and “social media marketing” teams to make sure they appear more often on Google and Facebook.

So, what Murdoch wants is not just for Google and Facebook to send free traffic his way, but actually for them to pay to send him traffic. That is literally all that these “news bargaining codes” are. They are direct wealth transfers, facilitated by politicians, from internet companies that are making money (Google/Meta) to media companies that are also (mostly) making money, but are mad that Google and Meta are successful.

Even if you believe that we need more sustainable options for journalism (and, as a journalist, I believe that very strongly), everything about link taxes is corrupt. It’s a direct, government-mandated, wealth transfer from one industry to another industry. It’s an out-and-out favor to the news industry (which the political class often relies on for election endorsements). It effectively takes money from one industry and hands it to another for doing nothing more than helping news sites get more traffic and distribution for free.

Meta has been much stronger than Google in standing up to these nonsense laws. Unfortunately, Google has caved in both Australia and Canada, while Meta has been more willing to push back.

However, last week, Google announced that it has begun experimenting with removing links to California news publishers with California’s link tax, the California Journalism Preservation Act by Buffy Wicks back on the legislative docket.

As we’ve shared when other countries have considered similar proposals, the uncapped financial exposure created by CJPA would be unworkable. If enacted, CJPA in its current form would create a level of business uncertainty that no company could accept. To prepare for possible CJPA implications, we are beginning a short-term test for a small percentage of California users. 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. Until there’s clarity on California’s regulatory environment, we’re also pausing further investments in the California news ecosystem, including new partnerships through Google News Showcase, our product and licensing program for news organizations, and planned expansions of the Google News Initiative.

I’ve seen some people get mad at Google about this, just as people were mad at Meta when they did a similar thing in both Australia and Canada.

But that anger is misplaced: be mad at Rupert Murdoch, who would be the largest single beneficiary of the law by far. Be mad at California Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who would be orchestrating this wealth transfer from companies that have employees in her district to Rupert Murdoch, and pretending this attack on the open web is somehow good for journalism.

Be mad at all the media companies that won’t report accurately on the problems of such a law because they so want in on this wealth transfer.

In the end, Google is doing exactly what the law suggests it should do. If the government taxes something, you get less of that thing. That’s a fairly fundamental economic concept. Here, the tax is ridiculously problematic because it’s (1) taxing something that should never be taxed: links on the open web, and (2) not a typical tax, but one where the monetary transfer goes directly from one industry to another. Either way, it remains a tax. And the end result of a tax is: less of what is being taxed. So, yes, if those links are taxed, there will be less links on Google and Meta to news sites.

And, obviously, this sucks for me as a California-based publication. But I don’t blame Google for doing what the law directly incentivizes. I blame Buffy Wicks for pushing an obviously flawed law, on a topic she clearly doesn’t understand, to please the local newspaper that endorsed her.

As we discussed last year, there’s historical precedent here. Richard Nixon passed a similar law in the 1970s, in exchange for newspaper endorsements. It hastened the collapse of local newspapers, but Nixon got his endorsements. Wicks seems similarly willing to sell out journalism in her state in order to get an endorsement. It won’t be good for smaller news publishers like ours. It won’t be good for the public. It won’t be good for the internet. But it will be good for Buffy Wicks and Rupert Murdoch.