Google threatens to disable search in Australia if media code becomes law

[My Pet Orangutan]

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Google says it will stop making its search function available in Australia if Parliament passes the Morrison government's proposed laws to force it and Facebook to pay news businesses for their journalism.

Google Australia managing director Mel Silva told a Senate hearing on Friday the proposed news media bargaining code remained "unworkable", and the company was prepared to exit the Australian market.

"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," Ms Silva told the inquiry.

It is the first time the digital giant has made the threat to disable its primary search function to all Australians in its response to the proposed laws.

Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/google-threatens-to-disable-search-in-australia-if-media-code-becomes-law-20210122-p56w2h.html

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The news business that the Australian government wants Google and Facebook to pay is Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, which owns the vast majority of Australian newspapers.

[KayF]

1. how is that a threat?

i'm not understanding something. I like Google but if it went away I would find something else in about 5 minutes, and then after an hour I would forget Google ever existed.

[DBoon]

2. Try Swisscows

there are other search engines waiting in the wings. If Google is out, they will get their chance

[canuckledragger]

3. DuckDuckGo is good alternative.

They have a focus on privacy, and show actual results at the top of the page, not 50 million paid-for results that have nothing to do with your search like google does.

[A_Woman_from_MI]

4. I've been using DuckDuckGo for a few years now

They've gotten so good, I don't even compare them to Google search results anymore

[Throckmorton]

9. Same here, Duckduckgo works well for me.

Lack of targeted advertising is a win for me.

[canetoad]

12. Yeah, I use that too

Funny thing is, they scrape the google results and serve them up free of Google ads and rankings. If Google shut their search down here, Duck Duck Go would still work.

[Miguelito Loveless]

5. Yes, but...

Any search engine that provides links to newspapers would have have to pay Australian newspapers, so they would face the same problem. To me, this would be like book publishers charging libraries for having card catalogues “linking” to their books.

[stopdiggin]

7. a good analogy

You can be no friend of Google (or any of the other internet titans) -- and still see that Australia has the wrong end of this discussion.

[Dr. Strange]

11. It's a threat to the extent...

that Google provides a lot of traffic for news sites and does it better than other search engines. So their leaving and de-indexing Australian sites would result in lower traffic for those sites.

[oasis]

6. Aussies will have to rely on their local pub know-it-all for reliable info. nt

[canetoad]

13. Er.....

That would be me.

[SmartVoter22]

8. Who started this mess? Rupert Murdoch?

Who wrote this legislation?

Why is there a payment to simply promote a link to original journalism?

What lawsuits have occurred, so far, that shows damages were inflicted upon newspapers or others?

This looks like something Rupert Murdoch would be behind.

Does this 'code' include news organizations that do not want payment, and would want to provide search engines with access, to refer or link, to any of their copyrighted and published works? I would think there are many, not just the few who would profit from this.

[Happy Hoosier]

14. The proposed law is stupid

No search engine company is going to pay to provide links.