Google is set to contribute $100 million a year to Canadian news publishers, in a deal that has the Liberal government bending to the tech giant's demands after it threatened to remove news from its platform.
Canadian Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge announced today that the federal government has reached a deal with Google that will benefit the news sector.
Ottawa has agreed to set a $100-million yearly cap on payments the company will be required to make to media companies when the Online News Act takes effect at the end of the year.
The law will compel tech giants to enter into agreements with news publishers to pay them for the news content that appears on their sites, if that content contributes to revenues.
The amount announced today is what Google said it expected to pay, and the figure is 41 per cent lower than the amount that would've been required under a formula in the government's draft regulations.
The deal also allows Google to pay into a single collective bargaining group that will serve as a media fund.