Google to remove links to news sites for some California users to test impact

Google's parent company Alphabet will temporarily remove links to California news sites for an unspecified number of users in the state, as it studies the impact of proposed legislation that would force the company to pay for serving up such content.

Mr Jaffer Zaidi, Google's vice-president of global news partnerships, said in a blog post on April 12 that the company would conduct "a short-term test for a small percentage of California users" to explore how the proposed legislation would affect the company's products.

A Google spokesperson declined to specify how long the test would affect the company's products.

A Google spokesperson declined to specify how long the test would last, how many users would be affected and which news organisations would be included.