Google threatens to withdraw search engine from Australia

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55760673

by pseudolus • 6 years ago

74 135 6 years ago

pseudolus2• 6 years ago

They can threaten but ultimately it would be a self-defeating move as, after they withdraw, the sky won't fall and other countries will quickly come to the conclusion that crossing Google is a viable option. A dangerous game for Google and a potential win for alternative search engine options.

creato• 6 years ago

How long until Murdoch comes for his cut of bing and DDG's revenue too?

tziki• 6 years ago

I doubt this law explicitly only applies to Google.

dheera7• 6 years ago

Australians won't need alternative search engines.

Google can just withdraw their business presence from Australia but continue to provide search.

If after that Australia wants to block Google like China that's on them.

Gustomaximus• 6 years ago

Would above mean Google stop serving ads in Australia? Clearly it's still in Google interest to serve them from afar but there must be some legalities about that. Previously Adwords for Australia was "run" and billed from Singapore for the tax benefits and they were pressured to end this.

And a plethora of marketing businesses will go batshit on the government if they force Adwords out of Australia. Adwords is a huge part of the industry. We're going to see this sector struggle for a while if they need to re-adjust.

z77dj3kl• 6 years ago

I'm not sure what exactly that would entail, but Google has quite big offices in Sydney and elsewhere. Google Maps came out of Sydney, and I believe a lot of its development still happens there.

pseudolus2• 6 years ago

Simply withdrawing their business presence from Australia would not necessarily remove their liability or remove them from the jurisdiction of Australian courts. The lack of a business presence is not always a shield against long-arm jurisdiction.

superasn• 6 years ago

But wouldn't that law apply to other search engines as well?

From what I could gather from the article it's a really stupid ill-thought out law and damages the whole internet in Australia for the benefit of few news companies.

jjcm2• 6 years ago

Potentially, but realistically not unless the engine has reached a critical mass. Per the draft code[0] whether or not it applies to your company is up to the Treasurer[1] - see relevant section: https://i.imgur.com/7RSqXDJ.png

There's a major issue here because as a search company you could wake up one day to find that a single person has decided your revenue and expenditure has changed drastically. Even if you believe the spirit of this law is good, the way this is written is downright dangerous.

[0] https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20Bill...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasurer_of_Australia

asymptosis2• 6 years ago

Sure, it's a stupid law, but that's a separate issue to the idea that Google's response is also self-defeating. We're already laughing at the idea of Google search no longer being available, like do they think we haven't heard of DDG and Startpage?

manicdee• 6 years ago

All the search engine has to do is direct traffic to the site where the article is, not host on AMP and thus collect all the royalties and ad revenue itself.

In the meantime, Google is “experimenting” with leaving out Australian media entirely which on one hand is good (starving Murdoch of oxygen) but on the other hand is terrible (starving everyone of oxygen).

iseanstevens• 6 years ago

I would like to see this happen - Getting reasonable placement on Google search has become about giving them money for Ads, or focusing on SEO over content.

kaishiro• 6 years ago

Sorry, but what does this comment have to do with the proposed bill and it's impact on being charged for proferring up news articles?

Barrin922• 6 years ago

Now I want this law to happen for the sole purpose of seeing if Google actually flinches. It seems like a silly threat given that there's now a fairly large amount of small search engine providers who would probably thankfully step into that market

r00fus2• 6 years ago

This law applies to them too. It could essentially create. blackhole of search (at least as it applies to the news sites).

Barrin922• 6 years ago

I don't think Google opposes the law itself in good faith, because it basically just demands that Google negotiate with media entities for a price-sharing agreement when it comes to showing their content. The Australian search market is obviously still a billion dollar business, the law is not literally 'unworkable' and Google probably knows this. What else is Content ID on Youtube? Third party revenue sharing agreements for content already exist on Google's own platforms.

What Google is afraid of is the precedent it sets for other countries to do the same and eat into their search revenue because it would dispel the myth that tech companies cannot be regulated, that's the real danger here.

hpoe• 6 years ago

On the one hand I'm usually pretty anti Google most of the time

On the other hand without looking at the actual law I remember when the Aussie prime minister said "the laws of mathematics are all well and good but in Australia the laws of Australia take precedence." When taking about backdoors for encryption that only the police could use.

A tough spot to be sure.

throwitaway1235• 6 years ago

Good for Australia.

fogetti2• 6 years ago

This is counterproductive in an English speaking country. There is a few similarly good alternative like Bing for example. In non-English speaking countries though this strategy might work.

koonsolo5• 6 years ago

Bing would be subjected to the same law

swiley• 6 years ago

Meh, I can't even get to google anymore when I'm visiting my parents. Connecting over cellular (the only option there) just gives me a captcha.

ipsum23• 6 years ago

Not surprisingly, the article claims are inaccurate.

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

No, Australia is trying to get Google to pay any time they link to a news website.

The bill text is here: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.....

(1) For the purposes of this Part, a service makes content available if: 19 (a) the content is reproduced on the service, or is otherwise 20 placed on the service; or 21 (b) a link to the content is provided on the service; or 22 (c) an extract of the content is provided on the service.

I wonder what will happen to the Google Australia offices.

NolF• 6 years ago

Is not even a landmark law... Spain and Germany did it first... My understanding is it didn't work too well for publishers due to the decreased traffic...

ocdtrekkie5• 6 years ago

Indeed, the problem is that Google is incredibly powerful, and one country at a time fighting them doesn't work. Google cuts them off until they back down.

We basically need a large group of countries to agree, at the same time, to make the same demands, to give Google no choice but to comply, or exit the business. (To some degree, the EU is capable of doing this, but enforcement and interpretation of EU directives can be a bit piecemeal.)

It's time for countries to start treating Google more like an enemy foreign power than a mere company, especially if it wants to act on that stage.

initplus• 6 years ago

Overseas, Google told news outlets "wave the fee or we remove your results". The Australian law has a new unique element forbidding this practice.

ipsum23• 6 years ago

The Australian law is different - Google cannot delist/derank the publishers from the search results, so Google is forced to pay or leave.

suifbwish4• 6 years ago

How exactly does a country get off making a law about what the businesses in another country are able to do over the internet? I’m sure there are countries that would like to get rid of free speech and prosecute homosexuality or speaking against a state religion perhaps? Why should we ignore them while listening to Australia’s ridiculous demands for linking to sites available via public DNS?

ocdtrekkie5• 6 years ago

If you want to do business, collect money, or have offices or employees in a sovereign country, you have to follow their laws. If you don't like it, you can leave. It's that straightforward.

offby37years2• 6 years ago

No difference to EU dictating GDPR laws.

threatofrain• 6 years ago

A country rules by the prerogative of power.

stolen_biscuit• 6 years ago

Google also do business in Australia, which means they are subject to Australian laws for the services they provide in Australia...

dheera7• 6 years ago

I agree Australia doesn't get to dictate what people do over the internet from remotely.

Neither does the EU.

Neither does China.

If you violate China's laws with your website, they block you. They don't need you to change your website. It's very simple.

If you violate GDPR, the EU is welcome to block you.

If you violate weird Australian laws, Australia is welcome to block you.

No different. Just that (hee hee) we know the EU and Australia won't dare set up national firewalls. But from the perspective of the website owner, they're welcome to set up a firewall if they don't like the website. But the website isn't going anywhere.

rstuart4133• 5 years ago

No, Australia is trying to get Google to pay any time they link to a news website.

Reality is ... always more complicated.

The problem they are trying to solve is Google is a monopoly in Australia (government claims 95% market share). The news businesses are a disorganised rabble. And rabble is putting it politely - more like a pack of thieves, stealing content off each other.

Being a thief was accepted because it didn't matter business wise. Their business was selling a daily dose of ads printed on dead trees. The "news" they are now fighting over was just the bait printed on those dead trees to entice people to read the ads. (Corollary: you're the product, not the customer goes back way longer than the internet.) Geography limits how far you can distribute dead trees (aka, newspapers), so each newspaper (or "masthead") operated over a limited area: about as far as you can transport a truck load of newspapers between midnight and dawn, so people could read your product over breakfast. Ergo, travel about 200km and any direction, and you were likely to find a new masthead, so there are lots of them, all fiercely independent.

The thing they stole of each other, and still steal off each other, is the bait, the "news", the thing they are so pissed off at Google for stealing. They didn't outright steal it of course, it was massaged by what they call a journalist into something that almost identical but side stepped copyright issues. The end result being if you look at two mastheads not too distant from each other, you will see very similar news featured on each. It didn't matter because the thing they were selling was the ads and they had a geographic monopoly. It wasn't stealing, it was cooperative behaviour driven by cost minimisation and it benefited everybody. I exaggerating of course as there is also paid for syndicated news and reprints of press releases, but much of what you read is tarted up tweets, internet posts, and scraped from other papers. It's only bait remember. It could be kitchen floor sweepings for all they care. All that matters is people lap it up, so they read those precious ads.

Then Google came along, following the industry practice of stealing content, to the point modifying by reducing it to a sentence or two so copyright didn't apply, but then sold ads to all their customers. Stealing customers and their revenue is a whole other thing.

The solution for the news businesses has always been obvious, just negotiate with Google for a price on the news. It's highly unlikely Google would forgo all news in their search engine, and there is only one place they could readily get it: the Australian newspapers. Google is already paying some Australian outlets for their content so they aren't complete Machiavellian pricks. But they are businessmen, so they've tested the market and found there were literally hundreds of outlets all selling the same merchandise and of course they had a highly valuable thing to offer in return: if we link to you, you get to display your ads. The response on the undisciplined rabble was to undercut each other trying to get that lucrative link, driving the price to zero.

The ironic thing is Google already gives them the tools they need to withhold their content: robots.txt and other more selective things. Google respects it https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/robots/in... , so all they had to do is use it. But like a pack of two years olds tasked with fairly sharing a bag lollies they couldn't, so they asked the government to do it for them. And that's what worked in France: the government rounded them up and forced them to negotiate as a single entity, so it was one monopoly negotiating with another, and after much haggling they came at a price.

I'm not a lawyer, but this Australian legislation appears to insisting on one on one negotiations between Google and each newspaper, with the government setting the price if they don't agree. This changes nothing, it’s still a 95% monopoly presented with a turkey shoot, so it’s inevitable they won’t agree. The idea of the Government setting forcing a price when two monopolies could just sort it out between them is I'm guessing what Google objects to, and I'm pretty sympathetic.

But now I'm floored. Google has retorted like some spoiled child: well we will just turn off Google search in Australia. It's, well, insane. It's making for great political theatre in Australia. We were regaled with nightly TV news footage of the pollies in parliament milking it for all it's worth (the Prime Ministers response "we make the rules" being just one of them). It's like Google walked into their home ground, and handed over their head on a platter.

I don't understand any of this. It's like we are dealing with a couple two year olds whose negotiating skills amount to making demands and throwing tantrums. What are they thinking?

mc322• 6 years ago

This doesn’t seem like a rational move.

Are they going to withdraw from Saudi, from Turkey, any other place that imposes their own laws?

If they do, I’d love to see Bing and the Duck go in and earn their keep.

Honestly, seeing Twitter, Amazon and now Google do things because it makes them “mad” to me shows they have too much power. I hope the EU puts their foot down and reigns them in.

On the other hand, news orgs can’t have it both ways. Google does not owe them money to index them.

Why can’t Google just not index news sites but provide other services?

Silhouette6• 6 years ago

Why can’t Google just not index news sites but provide other services?

Perhaps their lawyers have a problem with the principle or some ambiguity around it, maybe concerned that search engines could end up retrospectively being found to owe significant money to sites they didn't anticipate, perhaps very many sites they didn't anticipate?

I'm hardly a fan of the way big tech firms, Google included, sometimes act, and I do think freeloading based on others' content is a real problem that needs addressing. However, from the legal wording I've seen quoted so far this potential law appears to require a site like Google to pay up merely for linking to content hosted elsewhere, the most basic element of the WWW. If a news site doesn't want people linking to it, maybe the WWW isn't the medium it should use to publish its material?

mc322• 6 years ago

I think I’m on the same page. The law is ridiculous for requiring remuneration for providing a link but Google and other tech giants wield too much unchecked power and they need to be regulated, maybe broken up.

plorkyeran3• 6 years ago

This law specifically forbids them from not indexing news sites, because that's exactly what they did when other companies tried similar laws.

King-Aaron• 6 years ago

I'm not the biggest fan of Googles near-monopoly, but as an Australian I am seriously concerned by the Murdoch monopoly. These laws wouldn't even be in consideration if it weren't for old Rupe pushing the blatantly pro-murdoch government for it.

offby37years2• 6 years ago

"Private companies can do what they want"

radicalriddler• 6 years ago

Not sure if you're mocking the twitter censorship of Trump (after reading your post history, it would seem you are), but it's not concerning that Rupert Murdoch "wants" to do it, it's concerning that he has the power and influence over our public government to get it done.

Apple meet Orange.

tehjoker• 6 years ago

This is called a "capital strike" and it is an attack on national sovereignty. A mere dictatorially run company can tell an entire democracy what to do?

missedthecue3• 6 years ago

Should Australia be able to force US companies to do what they want?

lvs3• 6 years ago

Within their jurisdiction? Yes absolutely. That's call the rule of law.

Fordec2• 6 years ago

Well flip that around for a second to step beyond the US focused bias and see if the logic still holds up.

Should the US be able to force Chinese companies to do what the US wants?

Silhouette6• 6 years ago

A mere dictatorially run company can tell an entire democracy what to do?

To be fair, Big Media have been doing something not unlike that for generations, as have big businesses in numerous other industries through various forms of lobbying, regulatory capture and revolving door politics. It's not as if Big Tech getting in on the act is a unique or original move. Not that this necessarily makes it any better, of course.

One interesting potential difference this time is that in a very direct way, Google are only strong enough to make this strategy work if they have a lot of popular support for their services continuing to operate, which is another way of saying that their services are providing a significant public benefit and possibly they have a point. If their services aren't all that and competitors can readily step in to provide a similar value to society, as various comments here have already suggested, then this strategy by Google is doomed to fail and will also leave them in a considerably weaker position when it comes to playing poker over other regulation in the future.

stretchcat2• 6 years ago

In the past there have been companies that had their own navies. Maybe in a few years..

MattGaiser2• 6 years ago

Google refuses to operate a search engine in China because of the laws it imposes. Mad about that too?

stretchcat2• 6 years ago

China isn't a democracy, is it?

gerash• 6 years ago

They are not telling a democracy! what to do. They are saying if you want to do a money grab we're out.

koonsolo5• 6 years ago

What? Google just says it won't do business under those circumstances. How is that telling a democracy what to do? They just tell what they will do under those circumstances.

cromwellian3• 6 years ago

From the text of the bill "(1) For the purposes of this Part, a service makes content available if:... 21 (b) a link to the content is provided on the service..."

This is pay for linking. It means anyone linking to a content provider is putting themselves at financial risk. Even if Google withdraws from Oz, whoever becomes the "Baidu" of Australia will essentially be faced with the same issue: They would have built their user base because user search engine demand is driven by content on the internet, one of the main purposes of a search engine is to provide links to that content, and this law exposes any search that links to content to claims on their revenue.

Of course, small sites need not worry, we hope, unless people can use the law to launch frivolous lawsuits and nuisance claims, but whoever would replace Google (even DDG) would face the same claims from news providers.

The reality is, the news business has been disrupted by the internet. They used to face competition only from a few local or regional competitors, but now the internet puts them into competition with all news providers around the world at the touch of a button. There's no going back to the way things were.

In much the same way that music and tv got disrupted by Spotify and Netflix's models, the publishing world needs new business model, and trying to siphon off search engines I don't think is sustainable. They need a Spotify for News. And by that, I mean, content publicly discoverable, but paywalled behind a subscription service, that needs to be super low overhead.

A number of distributed mechanisms have been tried, by both Google, and others, at micropayments, but it seems to me that micropayment systems have largely failed for some reason.

ocdtrekkie5• 6 years ago

Considering the two leading search engine companies are in the Fortune 25, I think it's absolutely sustainable to siphon off search engines. They make a massive amount of pure profit, and are amongst the richest companies in the planet in raw cash on hand.

And it's also very fair, because search engines are, functionally and fundamentally, content scrapers. Everything they have and everything they offer is done by consuming the work of others.

Aerroon2• 6 years ago

But search itself isn't the paying feature for either company. If they say "no, thank you" then what do you replace it with? A worse search engine that also loses money? How do Australians come out ahead in this?

renata• 6 years ago

And it's also very fair, because search engines are, functionally and fundamentally, content scrapers. Everything they have and everything they offer is done by consuming the work of others.

I guarantee that if you make Google pay everyone they link to, they will charge everyone they link to that much + overhead, and everyone except weird hobby sites that don't care how many visitors they get will pay it. Google provides value to websites as well as consuming value from them.

cromwellian3• 6 years ago

The internet/web was founded on permission-less, innovation, permissiveness, and openness. People were invited to share content, to aggregate, to link, and relink. 99% of the people reading this now, who learned to code on the Web, learned by copying other people's code snippets, and not paying them a dime. Scraping content isn't a bug, it's a feature. View Source is a the primary feature of published Web content. Content scraping with transformation, is fair use, and a feature.

IMHO, if you publish something on the web, and you don't have a paywall, and you don't block in robots.txt, and you don't have a LICENSE that covers use, people are free to link to your content. Otherwise, why even participate in the web when you don't want to be part of it (the linking).

If people start charging for links, you may as well pack up the open web.

If there was an federated free search engine, like bitcoin-like for search, these news publishers would still be in trouble, and they'd have no one go after, which suggests the problem is fundamentally, something with their business model.

asdfasgasdgasdg7• 6 years ago

One way you can see it is not fair in the least is that Google would decline to index the content were it allowed. That suggest that the content has little economic value to google.

Aerroon2• 6 years ago

Is this law protectionism? Remove the foreign incumbents to give local businesses a chance to establish themselves, then slowly remove the restrictions?

throwaway3699• 6 years ago

News media from big corporations is dying, nothing can save it because it's all pretty much clickbait trash or propaganda. So little of the real journalism these media empires did remains.

Independent journalism has to be the future, and whoever provides a platform for that will win.

dcw303• 6 years ago

The way the bill is written is disappointing because it conflates two different things together:

For the purposes of this Part, a service makes content available if: (a)the content is reproduced on the service, or is otherwise placed on the service; or (b)a link to the content is provided on the service; or (c)an extract of the content is provided on the service.

I think most of us would agree that a search engine being charged for providing links (b) is pretty dumb.

But with the rise of content embeds and republishing (a/c), it's a completely different scenario when Facebook is sucking up your content for the benefit of their users.

So while I feel this is a raw deal for search engines, it is about time that social media platforms paid their dues.

tamrix• 6 years ago

As someone from Australia. I'm okay with this.

Let's be real Web search isn't that new or special anymore.

Before you cry that Google has the best results, the results are actually fed by data mining users. If we all jumped onto Bing tomorrow, after enough usage, it will have the same results as Google.

Amp and Chrome dominating the market is reason enough to ditch Google before it continues to abuse its monopoly like this.

Mayzie5• 6 years ago

As someone else from Australia, I am not, not is anyone else I have spoken to.

Yea, Google needs to be reigned in, but not like this, not with corrupt legislation handing free money to old established news organisations in an attempt to keep them afloat.

You do realise other search engines will likely have to comply (or leave the country) too, right?

denismi• 6 years ago

If the proposal was to treat Amp, or excessive embedding of content on social media feeds etc., as effectively piracy and prosecuting on that basis then I'd be open to it. But I just can't get behind what is being proposed in any way because it is so absurd and arbitrary.

As a supporter of a free and open Internet, I can't see how the logical conclusion of requiring websites to reimburse the other end of a hyperlink for the privilege of linking to them could possibly be a good thing.

As a user of the Internet in Australia, I am concerned about what the obvious sovereign risk of the Treasurer having this power to arbitrarily punish web companies does to the availibility of services to Australian users.

As a software developer in Australia (albeit one who hasn't worked directly in web tech to date), I am concerned about the damage this does to the tech industry, and subsequently my employability and income, in this country.

And most of all as a political citizen of Australia, I am deeply troubled by the idea of giving politicians the power of deciding which media organisations do/don't have the power to arbitrarily extort money out of FAANG as a significant revenue stream.

Fordec2• 6 years ago

From a link in another thread[0]:

"But iterated games sometimes require a strategy that deviates from apparent first-level rationality, where you let yourself consider lose-lose options in order to influence an opponent's behavior."

"Or, in layman's terms, sometimes you have to be a crazy bastard so people won't walk all over you."

[0] https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/still-alive

exabrial• 6 years ago

Please, Usa next. How do we sign up?

justaguy88• 6 years ago

This will give oxygen to those who could build an alternative

koonsolo5• 6 years ago

Why would you want to build an alternative that is subjected to those same laws?

If google can make money, they will. If they can't, they won't. If they pull out of that market, maybe it's a good indicator of the potential benefit of starting such a company.

jjcm2• 6 years ago

Aside from the spirit / intent of this law, the way it is written is extremely poor / downright dangerous. Whether or not this law applies to your business online is not based on a set of metrics/rules/requirements, it's based on whether or not the Treasurer[0] of Australia decides it is: https://i.imgur.com/7RSqXDJ.png

As a company owner you can wake up one day to find that your company is now listed as an official designated digital platform corporation in the Federal Register of Legislation[1] and your finances have completely changed.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasurer_of_Australia

[1] https://www.legislation.gov.au/Browse/Results/ByRegDate/Legi...

pfundstein• 6 years ago

The whole thing looks like a desperate money grab. The primary purpose of a search engine is to provide links to content related to the user's search. This gives the content providers visibility. From my understanding this law requires that the search engine pay for listing some media companies as relevant search results. The law also makes it illegal to simply not list those media companies as relevant results. This strikes me as utterly ludicrous.

nieve• 6 years ago

It does look pretty awful:

"Although the Treasurer, in making the determination, must consider whether there is ‘a significant bargaining imbalance between Australian news providers and the group comprised of the corporation and all of its related bodies corporate’ the determination is not invalid for failure to consider this (s 52C(3))."

So there is only one factor they're required to consider for that portion, but they can choose to ignore it without apparent consequences. You can tell this was written specifically as a blatant money grab, something more legitimate would have factors beyond "because we say so" even if only to provide cover.

mancerayder• 6 years ago

So... When is news.duckduckgo.com / .au coming out?

Mayzie5• 6 years ago

Doubt it ever will, as DDG/<insert any other search engine here> would be forced to pay up and comply with this ridiculous legislation. Easier to just not bother with a country as small as Australia.

malwarebytess2• 6 years ago

I think that clearly something needs to be done though I don't know what. Something has to give.

Search engines are absolutely a parasitic business, for the mere fact that they could not exist without the content they scrape, index, and serve to users. It would be permissible if Google didn't make a profit by doing these things, but they do. So--something needs to be rebalanced. Either search needs to be a public service, non-profit, or there needs to be a profit sharing or some new licensing scheme or law that the content owners are subject to.

splaytreemap2• 6 years ago

It's the exact opposite of parasitic. Search engines scrape your site so that they can help users find your site.

If you don't want Google scraping your content, add a noindex directive or robots.txt to your site and Google won't scrape it or link to it.

malwarebytess2• 6 years ago

At best it is symbiotic. But the imbalance in power makes it parasitic as Google will absolutely leverage its power to make sure they receive the most out of the arrangement. I think parasite fits better since the content creator can exist without google, but google cannot exist without the content creator.

ryan-allen• 6 years ago

Why can't Google simply not return news articles from Australian publishers and be done with it?

People will just go to abc.net.au or smh.com.au or news.com.au directly, if that is not their habit already.

plorkyeran3• 6 years ago

The law explicitly does not allow them to do that.

Silhouette6• 6 years ago

An interesting related story that has been hitting the news this evening:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/google-agrees-to...

zaptidizap• 6 years ago

Making a search engine is not as hard as building traffic for it. G quiting au would make it ez.

NotChina• 6 years ago

Doit! The repeat in he USA!

dang2• 6 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25789773

Mayzie5• 6 years ago

Respectfully, that is not the same thing. The news article from the OP (and why there's so many today), is because Google just confirmed (/threatened) that it will. That other article from a week ago is just speculation.

dang2• 6 years ago

It's possible I missed a nuance but I'm not seeing the difference between 'speculation' and 'threat' as significant enough to support a substantively different discussion, which is the criterion we use in such cases:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Mayzie5• 6 years ago

Why is this thread marked as a dupe, despite having many more comments than any other submission / not being merged? And where is a link to this dupe?

Now it's just going to be buried.

stunt• 6 years ago

The only way to make it work is asking more countries to join. They should plan this together.

koonsolo5• 6 years ago

Maybe I'm missing something, but search engines make money by selling (some) links. Now all of a sudden, governments are expecting them to pay for links?

And when the search engine says "Sorry, that's not a good business case for us, we won't be operating in your country", that is considered a "threat"?

Look, companies want to make money. If you don't allow them to make money, they won't operate. Is it that hard to understand?

FrozenVoid• 6 years ago

I think they're going to exit the market until Australian legislation changes, Google will fight it on principle, since the law is essentially adding "link rent" to web searches(and uncertainty to legality of linking itself). However, whats more interesting who will replace them: Yandex(used by DDG) and similar engines(Baidu?) will not be strongarmed by Australian government to pay for links, giving them a competitive advantage..

dbetteridge• 6 years ago

If the Australian government wants to try and force Google to make payments that exceed the revenue they get in Australia and is effectively preventing simply de-listing news sites (this is in the code). This seems like a reasonable approach to me.

I don't agree generally with a lot of Googles business practices but I feel like this is just a desperate attempt to increase profits by the Murdoch media in Australia.

As has been said elsewhere, if news sites don't want their content to be indexed/smart-carded by Google they can set that in their page headers and robots.txt

The problem is they want to have their cake and eat it too, they want all the traffic passed through Google but they also want to effectively be paid for the users that never visit their site (Whether or not they ever would have).

Disclaimer: Am Australian

Google threatens to withdraw search engine from Australia

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