Google has agreed to pay $100 million annually to Canadian publishers as part of a deal with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government that would avert a potential news blackout in the country, according to reports.
The tech behemoth reached agreement with officials in Ottawa on a framework deal whereby the company pledged to make regular payments to Canadian news outlets in exchange for content being made available on its search engine, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported on Wednesday.
The deal ends months of negotiations that ramped up ahead of the Dec. 19 deadline to comply with the nation’s Online News Act, which demands compensation from digital platforms with 20 million unique monthly users and annual revenues of more than $1 billion.
Google and Facebook are the only two firms that meet the criteria.
Google had threatened to block Canadian news sites from its search results if the law came into effect.
Meta — whose social network, Facebook, controls a large chunk of the digital advertising market alongside its competitor Google — has followed through on its threat to block news content in Canada after Mark Zuckerberg’s company balked at Ottawa’s demand.
As part of the agreement, Google will be allowed to negotiate with a consortium of news organizations rather than with each of them individually.
The company reportedly feared that talks with each separate news outlet would have forced it to pay more for content.
The $100 million sum is reportedly less than the $172 million the government was seeking from the Mountain View, Calif.-based search giant.
The Post has sought comment from Google.
There is no word as to whether negotiations between the Canadian government and Meta will resume in the near future.
Meta has said the Online News Act “is based on the incorrect premise that Meta benefits unfairly from news content shared on our platforms, when the reverse is true.”
Trudeau has slammed Zuckerberg’s company as “bad for democracy” after Facebook began blocking news stories during destructive wildfires in Canada over the summer.
The Post has sought comment from Meta.
Meta in recent years has altered Facebook’s algorithm to de-amplify news in favor of photos, videos, and content created and shared by family and friends — resulting in a considerable drop in referral traffic for publishers.
The Canadian law was modeled on similar legislation that was crafted in Australia.
Both Google and Meta eventually reached agreement with Australian news publishers by agreeing to pay for content.