Google strikes a $250 million agreement to avoid new media legislation

Google's new deal with California lawmakers will pay news outlets across the state up to $250 million over the next five years while helping the tech giant avoid paying more. The first-in-the-nation deal, funded by taxpayers, Google and possibly other private sources, allows the search giant to bypass a proposed state bill that would have paid to connect Californians with news articles. 

The money will be distributed between two events managed by the Journalism Transformation Foundation from the School of Journalism at the University of California Berkelia. According to Politico, it is planned to issue $ 180 million, which will be issued to California News Media (exclusive TV companies), while the remaining $ 70 million is stated in artificial intelligence resources to help "improve work". The plan is expected to begin at one point in 2025.

“The deal not only provides funding to support hundreds of new journalists but helps rebuild a robust and dynamic California press corps for years to come, reinforcing the vital role of journalism in our democracy,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement. The California News Publishers Association also praised the agreement, calling it “a first step toward what we hope will become a comprehensive program to sustain local news in the long term.”

The agreement follows a two-year battle between tech giants and the news industry regarding how local journalism should be supported amid a shift toward online readership and a decline in advertising. The California Journalism Protection Act (CJPA) is a proposed solution, and the study estimates that Meta and Google would owe US ​​publishers $13.9 billion a year if passed. Google responded by conducting a test to remove links to news sites in California, saying the CJPA "may result in significant changes to the experience of its products." The five-year contract now expected to replace it has drawn criticism from lawmakers and journalists. California state Senate Majority Leader Mike McGuire expressed concern about the funding in a statement to Politico, saying the deal "doesn't fully address the inequities facing the industry."

"Publishers who claim to represent our industry are celebrating an opaque deal tied to taxpayer funds, an obscure AI accelerator project that could destroy journalist jobs, and minimal financial commitment from Google to return the wealth this monopoly has stolen from our newsrooms," the Western Media Guild said in a statement. “Not a single organization representing journalists and news workers agreed to this undemocratic and secretive deal with one of the businesses destroying our industry.”