Google warns Ottawa’s Online News Act would ‘break’ its search engine – The Globe and Mail

Google is ramping up its opposition to the federal government’s Online News Act, warning the proposed new law would “break” its popular search engine.

Google Canada vice-president and managing director Sabrina Geremia released a detailed criticism of the bill Monday in an online post, stating the bill as currently drafted would likely make Canada’s news industry worse off and would hurt Canadians’ ability to find quality information.

One of the social-media giant’s biggest concerns is language in the bill that prohibits “digital news intermediary operators” – a category that would apply to Google and other search engines – from giving “undue or unreasonable preference” to specific news items.

The company argues this language is unclear and puts at risk the core function of Google’s search engine, which is to provide ranked responses to a search query.

It also states that requiring Google to pay the news organizations that appear in search results amounts to a “link tax” and could…

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