Meeting its 60-day deadline following the agreement that was reached in October, Google has now paid its first annual C$100M (£55m) to the Canadian Journalism Collective. By doing so it has secured its exemption to the country’s Online News Act. However UK publishers should not hold their breath, the platform environment is changing and we may not see many more deals of this scale resulting from the use of publisher content in general search.

If this agreement had not been reached Google would have been subject to the final offer arbitration mechanism within the act, forcing it to pay for content in search results; a line it resolutely refuses to cross (although I believe it is likely to be forced, possibly this year, to pay for content used to inform AI Overviews). The funds will be distributed to Canada’s news businesses on a per-journalist basis (an imperfect formula but it’s hard to conceive of anything better). The calculation lands with outlets receiving almost C$14,000 for each editorial headcount.

Those hoping that this augurs well for the prospects of UK publishers securing a similar deal are, in my view, going to be disappointed, at least in the short-term. Whilst the UK’s digital markets unit regime, which also includes a final offer mechanism, has been given statutory force, the structure of the regime is substantially different to that in Canada.