[freedomben]

I'm not Canadian but have many friends and family there having worked and lived there in the past.

I couldn't agree more. The current gov went way overboard with this, and by Google caving they have just guaranteed more of the same. There's no incentive from everyday people anymore for politicians to care about this.

I'm usually pretty in-the-middle on issues, but in this case it seems ridiculous. Google is giving them a valuable service for free by sending traffic their way. If it wouldn't violate neutrality, they should pay Google not the other way around[1]. A quick logic check helps reinforce this: If appearing in the search results were a bad thing for them, then why would these companies hire SEO experts to bolster their search rankings?

[1]: Note this is regarding the "tax" for serving a link, not talking about a full preview or AI summary or something, on which I'm much more sympathetic to the site owners and think they have a legitimate case worthy of debate