The California legislator at the center of a first-in-the-nation deal between Google and the state to help fund local news organizations and an artificial intelligence accelerator project defended the agreement from critics who said it didn’t go far enough.
The $242.5 million deal has led to the demise of Assembly Bill 886 , authored by Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, which would have made Big Tech pay for news that appears on its platforms in perpetuity.
Wicks, in an interview Thursday with The Bee, said the public-private deal represented the best of what was actually achievable, and called it a win for California journalism…