In response to a new Canadian law requiring payments to news organizations, Google said it will remove links to Canadian news sources from Google Search and Google News for users who access the services in Canada. “We have now informed the Government that when the law takes effect, we unfortunately will have to remove links to Canadian news from our Search, News and Discover products in Canada, and that [bill] C-18 will also make it untenable for us to continue offering our Google News Showcase product in Canada,” Google President of Global Affairs Kent Walker wrote yesterday. Google complained that Canada’s Online News Act “Requir[es] two companies to pay for simply showing links to news, something that everyone else does for free. The unprecedented decision to put a price on links creates uncertainty for our products and exposes us to uncapped financial liability simply for facilitating Canadians’ access to news from Canadian publishers. We have been saying for over a year that this is the wrong approach to supporting journalism in Canada and may result in significant changes to our products.”

Source: Google tells Canada it wont pay “link tax,” will pull news links from search

Okay, but what’s a reasonable compromise?