Google threatens to withdraw search engine from Australia

BBC ^ | Jan 22 | BBC

[RandFan]

Google has threatened to remove its search engine from Australia over the nation's attempt to make the tech giant share royalties with news publishers.

Australia is introducing a world-first law to make Google, Facebook and potentially other tech companies pay media outlets for their news content.

But the US firms have fought back, warning the law would make them withdraw some of their services.

Australian PM Scott Morrison said lawmakers would not yield to "threats".

Though Australia is far from Google's largest market, the proposed news code is seen as a possible global test case for how governments could seek to regulate big tech firms.

Australia's code would tie Google and Facebook to mediated negotiations with publishers over the value of news content, if no agreement could be reached first.

Google Australia managing director Mel Silva told a Senate hearing on Friday that the laws were "unworkable".

"If this version of the code were to become law, it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia," she said.

But lawmakers challenged this, accusing Google of "blackmail" and bullying Australia for raising the reform.

"It's going to go worldwide. Are you going to pull out of every market, are you? Is this about stopping the precedence?" asked Senator Rex Patrick

[BobL]

It will take a country with MORE FREEDOM than the US (basically any Western country, at this point) to stop these monsters from running the world, which they’re getting close to accomplishing.

[eyeamok]

You BAN Anything Google from your Country entirely and watch them change their tune.

[dsrtsage]

Crickey!

[cyberstoic]

Your search results are not the same across search engines. Google puts paid results first, and then manipulates search order and ranking based on their environmental and political beliefs. Their research shows most people never scroll past the first 10 results so they load those with sites that pay them and bury non woke sites. The algorithm also tailors results to you and their knowledge of you they have hoovered up stalking you around the web.

[cgbg]

Google has put their fat finger on the scale of political discourse with their censorship and shadow-censorship policies.

That makes them a dangerous enemy of free people (and slaves) everywhere.

An enemy of Google is a friend of liberty (at least for that moment).

[SmokingJoe]

Google puts paid results first, and then manipulates search order and ranking based on their environmental and political beliefs.

You are right.

[sarge83]

I have been using DuckDuck for several years and like it, even use its browser version on my Iphone and its not bad. I wish there were more free email sites out there than google and outlook though.

[existentially_kuffer]

Palmface! Tks

[M Kehoe]

Guck Foogle.

There are better search engines out there.

5.56mm

[Drago]

There is “ProtonMail” (Swiss/encrypted/”Free” to a point).

Also a “list”: (can’t vouch for any on there except “ProtonMail)

https://itsfoss.com/secure-private-email-services/

Or buy “www.Sarge83.com” and host your own email...not that expensive! ;-)

[mosaicwolf]

Duck Duck Go is great. It even blocks google from getting your info.

[FLT-bird]

That’s OK. Others will be happy to service that market.

[MinorityRepublican]

They’re both “evil”.

[Hootowl99]

I hope that Australia follows through on implementing this law. The status quo is economically strangling out the smaller, local and independent news media that gives us divergent information so that we can be better informed and thus better evaluate and make decisions. Look at where we are now in the US. A half dozen or so news corporations own the majority of tv, radio and print news sources. What good has come of that?

If Google pulls out of a market, cool. Some else will replace them. For that matter, Google is not the only search engine crawling the internet to assemble a proprietary index.

My info is dated but some years ago, I was admin for a website and thus had access to the admin level tools. Websites have search engine bots crawling their nonsecure content continuously. Prominent at that time were Google, Bing, Yahoo and less frequently Yandex. Occasionally, there were commercial bots that do for-hire indexing for market research or business reputation kinds of things.

To me, Google wants to get their base data for free then sell the user information for $$$. Nice racket they have going.

Australia, please do not hesitate to kick out Google if they won't play nice. Google is not irreplaceable. Pay no heed to the chicken littles crying that the sky will fall. The sky will not fall. Google is replaceable. The people writ large will be the better for it.