On Friday, Google responded to a pending bill in the California state legislature, the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), that would require Google to pay a link tax to publishers by testing removing links to California based publishers and pausing investments in news publishers within the state.

Google wrote, “To prepare for possible CJPA implications, we are beginning a short-term test for a small percentage of California users.”

Google said they are “testing process involves removing links to California news websites, potentially covered by CJPA, to measure the impact of the legislation on our product experience.”

Then Google also said, “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.”

This is not the first time Google made this move, a decade ago, a similar thing in Spain happened, only to return in 2022. Same in other countries like Canada and others.

Google is literally threatening states and countries. As Greg Sterling wrote on X, “It’s absolutely fine for Google to speak out on policy issues it disagrees with. It’s also fine for Google not to carry any news. It’s not fine for the company to try and intimidate lawmakers and publishers.”

There are a lot of good write ups and commentary on this topic that Techmeme brought all together.

Are you based in California? Are you in this test where you don’t see snippets from California based publishers?

I checked and still seeing California news sources here (at least @latimes specifically).

— Jennifer Slegg (@jenstar) April 14, 2024

Forum discussion at X.