Newsom’s Google news deal yields nothing for journalism

The deal, which Newsom hailed as a “major breakthrough in ensuring the survival of newsrooms” at the time, was reached after Google spent a record sum — $11 million — lobbying state lawmakers successfully to drop two proposals that would have forced Google to pay newsrooms for using their content. Under the agreement, the state would pay $70 million and Google $55 million into the newly established California Civic Media Fund for local news outlets. Google would also continue issuing its annual $10 million newsroom grants.

But in May 2025, citing budget restraints, Newsom slashed the state’s first-year commitment to just $10 million for fiscal year 2025-26, with no future state funding guaranteed. Google subsequently said it would match the state’s $10 million investment but no more.

Google was clear in the deal that “its contributions were contingent” on state funding, similar to its journalism funding deal in Canada, said Erin Ivie, spokesperson for Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat who brokered the deal in 2024.

A 2019 study by the trade group News Media Alliance estimated that Google made $4.7 billion from news sites in 2018. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, made over $100 billion in the third quarter of 2025 alone — its “first ever $100 billion quarter,” said Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai.