California officials are being called to launch a Federal investigation on Google following its decision to limit the news links from the state accessible to its search engine results.
The News/Media Alliance, a journalism advocacy trade group based in California, is reportedly urging the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice to launch a probe regarding Google's actions that "appear "to either be coercive or retaliatory."
The alliance's call was first reported by the Los Angeles Times, a member of the advocacy group.
Google's decision to pull away from California-based outlets was made to avoid the state's new law that will require tech companies to pay news publishers for running ads alongside their news content.
In an earlier blog post, the tech giant dismissed the proposed law as a "wrong approach in supporting journalism," accusing legislators of undermining news in California.
The FTC and the DOJ have yet to release a public statement regarding the petition.
Also Read : Google Removes California News Websites Links to Prevent Paying Under Pending Legislation
Google Runs Away from Paying News Publishers for their Ads
This was the second time Google has threatened to limit visibility of news outlets from its platforms.
Just a few months ago, Google pulled the same threat in response to the newly passed Online News Act.
Canadian legislators later convinced the tech giant to pay news publishers $73 million each year for running ads along their articles.
So far, only Meta has maintained its decision to bar Canadian news outlets from promoting its article links on Facebook and Instagram, although it is worth noting that it later shut down its News Tab.
Related Article : Google Agrees to Pay $74 Million Annually for News Content in Canada
California News Publishers Demand Compensation from Tech Giants
The push to make Google accountable reflects the declining revenue in the news industry in the US while tech giants continue to profit from them.
It does not help that efforts to build digital news outlets as alternative revenue sources have been met with pushbacks by platforms owned by the same tech giants hosting their content without much compensation.
The effect of this trend can already be felt with the growing number of layoffs across several publications.
News organizations are also often the target of many web crawlers for their licensed content to use as training datasets for AI models.
So far, The New York Times is leading a historic movement to create a precedent over the issue with its copyright battle against OpenAI and Microsoft.
