Google says it will reduce some user access to California news sites

Google said Friday it would remove links to California news sites from its search results for some of its users, as it pushes back against a pending bill that would require the Silicon Valley technology company to pay publishers.

The search giant said the bill, called the California Journalism Preservation Act (CJPA), would upend its business model. The bill, if signed into law, would require companies including Google to fork over a “journalism usage fee” when they sell ads next to news content.

“We have long said that this is the wrong approach to supporting journalism,” wrote Jaffer Zaidi, vice president of Google’s Global News Partnerships, in a blog post on Friday. “If passed, CJPA may result in significant changes to the services we can offer Californians and the traffic we can provide to California publishers.”

Google also said it is “pausing further investments in the California news ecosystem.”

Many news outlets rely on sites like Google and Facebook to distribute its news, but they are at the whim of the companies’ algorithms.

Publishers, including the Los Angeles Times, have laid off staff in part due to revenue shortfalls blamed on the decline of newspapers.