California bills could restore journalism after Big Tech’s ‘second gold rush’ pushed industry to the brink

By Laura Rearwin Ward  OPINION (CALMATTERS) – A federal district court in Washington D.C. last week ruled that Google violated the law through its monopoly over general search services and advertising. Two bills now making their way through the California Legislature seek to address the damage this monopoly has done to the journalism sector. Assembly Bill 886, the California Journalism Preservation Act, would create a remedy for Google’s search violations, and Senate Bill 1327 provides a remedy to its unfair advertising advantage. In response to both bills, Google has been running an aggressive advertising campaign, warning the public it will remove news from its search engine in California if the journalism preservation bill is passed and finances get restored to the news sector. Meta, operators of Facebook and Instagram, has already carried through on that threat in Canada. Sounding an alarm about Big Tech in California, state Sen. Steven Glazer, a Democrat from Orinda, authored SB 1327 to revive local journalism, calling it the most important legislation of his career. Glazer refers to the unfair profit advantage that Google, Amazon and Meta have attained as a “second gold rush” in California. These mega-platforms have unfairly leveraged consumer data to profit...