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Google blocks California news in response to bill that would force tech giant to pay

The company on Friday said it has started blocking California-based news outlets to protest a pending bill that supporters say would extend a lifeline to the ailing news industry.

Wicks argues the bill would infuse California's news industry with much-needed support in a moment in which publishers have seen subscriptions and advertising revenue precipitously decline. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Christina Warren, an outspoken advocate for software engineers, called payments for hyperlinks"obscene," since they are "antithetical to the open web and everything it stands for." "For more than a decade, tech giants built the world's most valuable companies off the backs of journalists while siphoning off revenue from news publishers by creating digital advertising monopolies," wrote Courtney Radsch, who leads the Center for Journalism and Liberty at the Open Markets Institute.

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