Google and California made a deal last year to help out local news, but now California is kind of backing out of the deal. And hey, Google might do the same thing, who knows?
California and Google were supposed to each chip in a bunch of money to help out local news outlets over five years. But now, Governor Gavin Newsom is talking about cutting California’s part of the deal by two-thirds. Why, you ask? Well, apparently there aren’t as many resources as they thought there would be in the budget. So, they’re thinking of only giving $10 million in the first year instead of the planned $30 million.
This has got local news advocates and people who wanted tech platforms to pay news outlets shaking their heads. They already thought the original deal wasn’t good enough. And now, it looks like Google might not even be making its first payment of $15 million. Yikes. Plus, the whole thing was announced last August, but it doesn’t seem like much progress has been made to make it happen. Oh boy, what a mess.
