GOOGLE PROVES IT’S TOO POWERFUL

How do you know when a company has become too powerful?

If you were a policy wonk, you might look for signs of a monopoly. An economist could look at market share, or perhaps runaway profits. But if you were just a regular Canadian, you might instead simply note that you are being toyed with – or even intimidated.

For example; What if a company whose purpose is to make information available was in fact blocking news from the web?

That unfortunately, is what Google is doing currently. About 4% of Canadian users are having what news they see through Google’s search engine limited. The company is purportedly “briefly testing potential product responses” to Bill C-18, The Online News Act. It is a piece of legislation that would enact law to essentially push online tech giants like Google and Facebook into paying news organizations for their content. Google is not alone in its objections or heavy handed tactics. Facebook, too, threatened to cut off access to

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news if the bill passes – and in fact had done so in other countries like Australia.

Like all new laws, there is good reason to debate the bill, or probe it for weaknesses.

But regardless of what you think about the proposed changes, the mere fact that two American companies can make it significantly harder for Canadians to find news - and brandish their power to do so as a threat – makes it clear that Canada is on the right path in choosing to regulate big tech.

Google throwing its weight around only helps to shed light on this unavoidable fact.

For years, the idea of regulating the internet seemed unthinkable, in no small part because it was changing so fast. But times have changed. Facebook and Google totally dominate the ad market, controlling more than 80% of digital ads. Meanwhile, the news business is on the ropes, and has been for nearly two decades. Those two things are cause and effect, respectively.

Meanwhile, the idea that the web is some open utopia that is best left alone is long dead. Just look at the proliferation of misinformation and conspiracy theorists. Even something as innocuous as the “15 minute city” – an urbanist concept that you should be able to meet your daily needs in a 15 minute radius of your home – can turn into a wild, entirely concocted theory about government control.

Two things are thus clear: first, the idea of regulating big tech is perfectly reasonable: and second, a robust news ecosystem is a necessity for a functioning healthy democracy. That’s not to say Bill C-18 is the perfect vehicle to address those needs. But it is a start.

What it specifically propose is that the CRTC, the body that regulates communications in the country will be able to force tech companies to enter into arbitration to negotiate deals for news organizations’ content.

It’s based on the idea that Facebook and Google make money by becoming sites that aggregate news and links. It’s true that news organizations gain an audience through social media. But when you look at the massive disparity in ad revenue between the people making content and the people linking to it, it’s clear that this relationship is less a virtuous circle, than something closer to exploitation.

Bill C-18 follows a model implemented in Australia in 2021, which similarly encourages tech and news companies to arrive at licensing agreements – and at least according to a recent government report there, it appears to be working. Nonetheless, there is good reason to critique Bill C-18. For one, it may help entrench the power of established players on both sides. After all, a scrappy upstart news organization isn’t going to be negotiating a deal with Google right out of the gate, meaning it won’t get the same access to resources larger players might.

It is also true that, when one looks at the sorry financial state of news, part of the blame clearly belongs to news organizations themselves. Our slow, often ham fisted reactions to the digital shift did us no favours.

Yet the point here is to focus on the bigger picture. The status quo in which foreign companies own the key revenue driver in media, while Canada’s news and information ecosystems falters, is untenable. Intervening in such an unbalanced situation is the right and proper place of government, even if we must be very careful about unintended effects or flawed legislation.

The simple fact is that an information economy functions better when it is more open, more accessible, and is bettered by competition and challenge. Perhaps Bill C-18, will bring us closer to those ideals or perhaps it will not.

But Google and Facebook’s posturing is a sign that they know any attempts to bring them to heel will lessen their power. And as goals go, that is exactly what we want.