It's carriage drivers making the automobile industry pay them a fine for the crime of making them obsolete.
That's utter nonsense. If google is sending traffic to a site, then naturally they consider that site valuable in some way. Nothing about google makes news "obsolete", and in fact google is basically just a website for finding news articles (and other content). The Canadian implementation of this law, unlike the Australian one for example, gives google the option of excluding these news sites from search results entirely if they consider them unnecessary. That google has chosen to negotiate a deal instead demonstrates that google recognizes the value these sites provide.
I was mostly thinking of the lobbying groups in europe which very much didn't want to allow the "exclude from search results" opt-out.
In the regular world, people pay for links. Google had to ban the practice of paying for links because links are so valuable. And people still do it.
It is nonsensical to argue that links are a cost. So, this law was an attempt at a shakedown.
And it didn't work very well. Meta walked, and this deal with google exempts it from the law if it pays $100 million. All existing deals with the media were cancelled too.
Arguably it violates international agreements Canada has signed, as they essentially agreed to a level playing field for local and international firms.
