Google has agreed to pay $100 million annually for news in Canada

Google has pledged to allocate $100 million annually to a fund to aid Canadian news organizations, resolving a disagreement that threatened to remove news links from its services.

In an agreement with the government, Google has committed to putting $100 million annually into a fund that will assist Canadian news organizations. This resolves a disagreement that had threatened to remove links to news from Google's services.

Following the passing of an online news law intended to direct some of the money that Google and Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, make from online advertising toward the financial support of news organizations, a six-month standoff came to an end with the C$100 million (US$73.6 million) agreement. The argument over news subsidies escalated into the worst battle between the national government and internet corporations since Australia became the first nation to enact legislation on the subject in 2021. 

In protest of the law, Meta blocked connections to news stories in Canada earlier this year. Google promised to do the same when the law took effect in mid-December, unless the government lessened its impact.

The search engine behemoth firmly opposed requiring payment for news links inside its offerings, fearing that this would create a precedent that may be extended to other categories of web links. The internet behemoths have consistently maintained that their links bring valuable traffic to news websites rather than harming the news companies. For example, Google claims that its news links bring in C$250 million (US$184.2 million) annually for Canadian publishers.