The problem is this is a law that dictates the formation of a civil contract between private entities.

If news companies want to negotiate a contract with Google and co that has Google pay them to link to their content, let them do that. However, they’ve been unsuccessful at that because they have no leverage. If they delink from Google they stop getting traffic from Google, so they actually lose revenue.

I’d agree that if Google were causing harm regulation would be appropriate. But if the website tells Google to not index them they start losing revenue strongly suggests Google is not doing harm to the website being linked, but is instead providing a mechanism for revenue.

And even if regulation were appropriate, it should not be regulation that mandates a civil contract between two private entities. It should be, “Google cannot link to news sites.” By mandating a civil contract between two private entities it gives artificial leverage to the news companies, which can give unreasonable demands and Google is forced to accept.

Again, the news companies don’t want that outcome because it causes them to lose revenue. So this is only about the news companies having their cake and eating it too.