Google has agreed to pay Canadian publishers for their news material, backing down from a high-stakes threat to restrict all Canadian news content on its platforms, after an agreement reached Wednesday by the tech giant and the Canadian government to defuse the imminent crisis.
The accord settles disagreements between Google and Canada over C-18, a contentious law that requires internet platforms to compensate news publishers for their work.
It is also the latest twist in a global discussion about the role of digital platforms in helping—or suffocating—news publishers, particularly tiny, independent sources.
The search giant will pay $100 million CAD ($73.5 million US) every year into a fund that will be disbursed to publishers under the stated agreement with Google, the terms of which remain hazy because the law's final provisions have yet to be properly published. According to the Canadian government, Google's contributions will be adjusted to inflation.
Furthermore, rather than negotiating payment with individual publishers, Google "will have the option to work with a single collective to distribute its contribution to all interested eligible news businesses based on the number of full-time equivalent journalists engaged by those businesses," said Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge in a statement.
It was unclear how the collective would work or be regulated; the spokesperson for St-Onge did not reply quickly to a request for comment.