According to news, Google threatens to leave Australia.
What do you think will happen?
Edit: for those that said VPN. VPN aren't free, and the links that Google redirects to will be under the VPN bandwidth, is it not?
What Happens if Google Leaves Australia?
Frankensnore on 23/01/2021 - 18:27
Last edited 24/01/2021 - 10:37 by 1 other user
Last edited 24/01/2021 - 10:37 by 1 other user
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@DashCam AKA Rolts: Double-edged sword. The alternative is to pay a subscription to get lied to and provided with biased news and propaganda. I would rather be informed of this stuff for free.
I would happily pay for news if it was unbiased and stuck to facts only.
@Guybrush57: Unbiased?? … Facts??
That's an unobtainable utopia
Google won't leave Australia, they make too much money from us
@Forkinhell: They make very less money in the overall grand scheme of things. Australia for them is a very tiny, insignificant market. Their issue is not the size of market, but a precedent this law is setting.
@Forkinhell: Australia is nothing to Google, we are a tiny, tiny market overall, they would stop services here just to make a point. They sure wouldn't hand over their search algorithm to the likes of Newscorp just because the Australian government wants to force them to
@diddy50: Yes and I have the app installed.
Would Google have to pay ABC to present snippets of its articles to Australian taxpayers who effectively subscribe to ABC anyway?
@infinite: I must be googling wrong then because I get presented Murdoch shite all the time and I despise that old snake.
Or are you presenting Murdoch as a leftie?!
@infinite: Yep.
Look at David Wood.
Fine if you dont like him or agree with him, but should he be cancelled by google?
I first found his site by searching in google for "David Wood on youtube" as suggested by a friend and most of the first links linked to his channel.
Now if you do the same thing you wont see a single link to his channel, only vids which talk about him and wiki page.
Every other search engine I try does, even Startup Page which uses google data.
Just because he has a negative view on islam and muslims are a protected group on youtube hes being cancelled.
I believe in looking at both sides of an argument, google do not.
@DashCam AKA Rolts: Google aren't publishing news without paying, they are only linking to it. Those are very different things.
Google's main issue is not just that they would have to pay for news but that they would be required to give all news publishers 14 days notice of any change to their search algorithm, which they change hundreds of times a week.
News sites, actually any sites currently have the option not to be listed by Google but none of them have taken this option as Google provides value by sending them clicks.
@twadds: It is dumb that they should have to pay to link them to those sites. Imagine if Information Visitor Centres had to pay tourist attractions to send people there or if Channel 7 had to pay McDonald's to advertise one of their new burgers on their stations. It is arse-backwards.
@Ghost47: How else are they going to find the money to give the ministers to change the laws that better suit and get rid of any competators that threaten their empires
Just like harvey did to get GST on inports to try and get us to buy from him instead of buying overseas (you know the same place he buy's his stock and puts on a huger markup)
Google aren't publishing news without paying, they are only linking to it. Those are very different things.
The media and/or Gov have done a pretty good job so of providing the limited info that makes it look very different, to the point where the basic jist they give is Google is stealing the news so people never go to the site.
What sort of person can get the "news" from that super short summary text that's displayed. It's the news sites shooting themselves in the foot with ad revenue because of pay walls.
If it was ever described as news sites complaining they get scraped and appear in search results without a fee they'd be laughed off instead by the general populace.
What sort of person can get the "news" from that super short summary text that's displayed. It's the news sites shooting themselves in the foot with ad revenue because of pay walls.
I like this take. It's the equivalent of me going to the newsagency and getting charged money to look at the front page of newspapers stacked on the shelves. No one would ever walk into the newsagency again, lest their gaze accidentally drifts over a newspaper.
@twadds: Maybe Google should change that from opt-out to opt-in to be listed for news sites in Australia and see what happens.
Google aren't publishing news without paying, they are only linking to it.
What about Google AMP?
@Randolph Duke: A site has to present an AMP version, which is choosing to make use of that Google feature. You can't opt into something by developing for it, and then complain that that feature is stealing your revenue.
So effectively Google and Facebook taking this content without paying is costing local jobs and destroying local news services.
There is no such thing as local news. The Internet is designed to transcend borders. This is one of the things that make the Internet great.
Anyone that can string a few sentences together and have a smartphone may report news events and upload them online. This is a rude awakening for a local journalists that failed to anticipate that tech would someday take away their jobs.
@whooah1979: Journalists often don't even report the news in an objective manner. There's always some political agenda to it. Very hard to find true, objective journalism these days.
@Ghost47: Hear hear… Oh, this is so true.
I used to like reading news.com.au until I started seeing contradiction in their own articles.
@DashCam AKA Rolts: Have you ever used Google? The article isn't shown on the search results, you have to click the page, which results in you being redirected to the news websites' ad-filled webpage with the actual article. Google are not taking the content without paying. Lately on FB, if 7 News has posted something, it gives you a link to their website which has ads, which is exactly the same as Google.
I would say that print journalism has died for other reasons, one being the move to an online model as opposed to relying on printed newspapers.
News outlets just crying for more money and suing Google is the easiest way for them to do it.
Lately on FB, if 7 News has posted something
This is what's bothering me with the Facebook part of it.
Facebook isn't showing me it's own news articles - it's showing me news articles posted by the news companies either because I'm following said company or had a friend who shared the news companie's post.
It's like me giving a library a book I wrote and then expecting the library to pay me because they're making money off library memberships because people want to read me book…
@Quantumcat: It wasn't a perfect example, as yes libraries do (usually) pay for books.
But in my example, I have given the book to the library for free. And then after the fact, with no existing agreement, crying foul and demanding the government make the library pay for essentially advertising my book.
If the media code goes ahead, I think Facebook should just kick the media companies off the platform. I'd say they have every right for the above transgression.
@DashCam AKA Rolts: It doesn't seem this way to me. If I search for something, it shows up as a clickable link and frequently sends me to the actual website of the news producer. That's literally sending traffic to the producer's site.
How is the search engine taking content and publishing it on their own?
France required Google to pay for the use of news "snippets" in search results.
This is the publication that is in dispute.
@DashCam AKA Rolts: Bollocks
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHypeuHePEI&feature=youtu.be
The liberal national party are kowtowing to rupert
The real criminals are
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/foxtel-cable-television-pty-l…And we gifted them 40 million Australian taxpayers money so not only do they pay no tax they are also gifted money for doing it
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/t…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-12-12/ato-corporate-tax-tra…
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/australias-top-40-tax-dodgers…
Australia is getting fleeced and the liberal nationals are all for it while they tax the ordinary worker
How does it feel paying more tax than some billion dollar multinational?seven years and nothing to show for it but a trillion dollar debt
Wake up Australia
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Er-ridVXMAczdef?format=jpg&name=…
@DashCam AKA Rolts: Won't someone think of news corp? It'll be a sad day when the murdoch empire goes bankrupt
@DashCam AKA Rolts: When even ABC posts click bait articles, I'm done with gatekeeping journalism. Some of what i read is just tweets converted into articles. Pretty sad
Currently Google and Facebook grab what news content they want and publish at no cost to them.
If you're talking about Search, Google links to the news sites webpage and provides the publisher, page title (typically the headline), an image, a short snippet of text and the age/date of the linked page. If you consider reading the Google search result page enough, no wonder we have so many issues with people not RTFA.
This is a problem because people then stop subscribing to online news services and/or stop buy newspapers.
People are not stopping buying the paper or subscribing due to the Google search results page fulfilling their news needs.
The ads in these pay the journalists' wages. So effectively Google and Facebook taking this content without paying is costing local jobs and destroying local news services.
As above, Google is not taking any content. They are providing a link and giving a short snippet of the content for you to confirm that you want to click-through.
What IS costing the news companies money is just how good Google and Facebook are with advertising, and so advertisers just aren't giving their money to said news companies. This is what it's all about - Google/Facebook have taken a lot of advertising revenue from news companies, and they want that money back.
@DashCam AKA Rolts: This happened in europe from memory. Google removed their listings, and the web traffic plunged to the websites. the content creators shut their faces after that and everything went back to how it used to be. the same will happen here.
@DashCam AKA Rolts: Please see what Google has to say:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHypeuHePEI&feature=youtu.beAnd in answer to your post, the world is evolving. Yes, Google earns money when people search using Google- that is their business model.
One should not blame others for their own inability to adapt to a changing world. Google is NOT preventing them to do business- in order to be competitive, they have to change their business model and look for revenue streams.What will happen when in a few years, most of the news articles are written by AI bots?
Technological singularity is not too far! Those who are not prepared will have their business model disrupted. Evolve or die would be the new mantra. And I am not trying to scare people- am dead serious.Think, would it be acceptable to the Media companies, if Google introduces a setting (flag), that can be checked (put in the sitemap file to indicate that you do not want Google to index your content and present it in your search results), so that results from your website do not appear when people search for news?
Then the same media companies would blame Google of not showing their content in the search results.
Google has very little to loose if it decides to close shop.When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers. ( African Proverb).
The could just stop indexing or showing news sites in the search results.
I wouldn't care at all. And in the end - the pain will be felt by the news sites.On the other hand, there is always VPN.
Boy, wait til you find out about Australia's firewall.
Google do not give a shit about 'freedom of speech' when they determine (dictate) what news and current events you see.
No not at all… its about ownership of data and at what point they should pay for it…. quite the opposite of a dictatorship and not censorship
I noticed some news sites don't fully explain that. I got the real news from Linus tech tips lol
Aus Gov only went hard because Murdoch told them to, this is after he bought up as many publications as he could on the cheap because "News Media is dying".
Now their values will rise once they get more revenue from Google/Facebook.
This from a government that says "less regulation and more free market" you know its coming from business interests when they start making laws to bring in market regulation.
Aus Gov only went harder because google et al refused to negotiate a deal.
Wouldn't want to be a Google Australia employee right now..
Do they have any?
Apparently, 350 in Sydney and a few more in Melbourne.
They have offices in both Sydney and Melbourne.
Its fine. The Sydney branch is responsible for google maps.
I imagine having to finding a new job wont be too difficult for Google employees. They're basically the gold standard employer.
edit: misspelling
Just use a VPN?
Nek minnut Google creates VPN service.
Silly ambit claim.
Google will stop at nothing to dominate. If they voluntarily leave Australia they leave the door open to competitors.From my understanding, they are not leaving, but stopping access to their google search engine. So you can still access anything you do with a google account (apart from search). Pixel phones/Chromebooks, will still be sold and still work. Chrome (and all other google apps) will still work without the search. The only thing Google will lose is the advertising revenue from selected websites.
This is about them publishing news articles from other news sites and getting add revenue without passing it on to the original publisher (because someone is seeing it in a google link and not through the original webpage).
The Australian government is asking them to pass on the revenue to the original news sites, and they are saying "No, we just won't show those sites" and disabling google search for a select (and small) news market.
I'm not sure whether I'm for or against it, but I think this may hurt the news sites more than it hurts Google.
This is exactly what I commented on above… I have never seen these tech giants publish the news. Sure they get ad revenue on their own pages, but the actual content is still on the producer's site.
most people only read headlines, I'll be honest I've stopped visiting manually news sites and stuck to reddit (and I'm sure others have done the same and stuck to twitter/facebook).
I'm not sure if there's a net loss for the news orgs, but social media sites are definitely getting a lot of money off the back of news sites
The Australian government is asking them to pass on the revenue to the original news sites, and they are saying "No, we just won't show those sites" and disabling google search for a select (and small) news market.
If Google is willing to give up all of that ad revenue entirely instead of passing some of it on, then it's obviously not about the money but about the logistics of what they're being asked to do.
I'm not sure whether I'm for or against it, but I think this may hurt the news sites more than it hurts Google.
100% it will hurt the news sites more than Google. Google is a trillion dollar company. They will be fine. But your local municipal's news site? RIP.
News sites can't really be hurt any worse, they are all going under at this point in time. Something does have to change if we want to keep local content. Not completely for or against this move, but at least it is an attempt to save local content.
Sure, as long as the competitor is willing to pay news companies for searches sending traffic to the news site.
And remember, when it comes to this law replace 'Google' with 'Ozbargain' or 'Bing' or 'Facebook' or even something like a weekly newsletter that links to news articles.
The worst thing about this law is that Google etc are forced to negotiate with Media companies and if an agreement can't be reached the government will step in. Not a court of law, not an arbitrator, the government - and we know how impartial they are.
the government and media are being very careful to phrase this as a Evil Google versus the Australian People, but it's so much not that.
Google will stop at nothing to dominate. If they voluntarily leave Australia they leave the door open to competitors.
Competitors who will grow large and end up getting the same treatment and also leaving. And then there will be no search engines left.
Google is just playing chicken. If you can access website for an overseas company you can access Google.
Government might place IP block or Google might apply geo block themselves. It isn't like there is a shortage of search engines.
Easy enough to rewrite Google algos to no bring up news from specific list of .au sites. Easy. Google is just playing.
What they should do is just not serve news links.
Doesn't look good for a search engine.
They do it all the time for DMCA requests - not that different
Of course they could do it, but if people can't find the news of popular media outlets through Google then that isn't good for reputation.
It could convince users to try other search engines, or maybe they'd just read the news that Google shows them. Would be interesting to see how much of an influence Google has on people browsing the web.
@ozhunter: Google should just cut the murdoch media out of their results - see how fast they will tank and beg google to reinstate them back.
This would be true of every search engine in Australia, right? So Bing, etc. would have to do the same thing (or pay up) Will a Great Australian Firewall be installed to block traffic to DuckDuckGo if they don’t comply as well?
They had stopped showing some recently, abc news posted an article saying that their site wouldnt show up in results if searched.
With a video along.
I googled courier mail at the time and could not find it at all.I googled courier mail at the time and could not find it at all.
no great loss there :)
They did a test blocking news sites to 1% of Aussies. Probably was a flex. Looks like you were a part of the test.
Sadly they can't.
"You might think that Google would simply stop linking to Australian news sites. But that won't be allowed under the ACCC proposal. New non-discrimination rules require Google to treat sites the same whether or not it has to pay to link to them."
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/google-threatens…
That's ridiculous.
The real question is whether the Minister can make a determination that Australian media are in a position of bargaining at all with Google if Google choose not to index any Australian media content.
non-discrimination rules require Google to treat sites the same whether or not it has to pay to link to them
that don’t make sense - Google decides which sites its spider crawls. ACCC can’t force Google to crawl news.com.au. No crawl, no search result. There’s something else here.
WHY?
@coin saver: Because Google dictates services it offers to its customers. MYER can decide to stop selling all shoes tomorrow - can ACCC prevent this?
At best, ACCC can dictate that Google search doesn’t discriminate between free and paid news sites - all must be paid, even free sites.
Solution for Google is simple - create news broker publishing company (that doesn’t discriminate) and only show search results from it. Since it’ll source from multiple other outlets, it can’t be accused of abusing market dominance.
For more information, have a read of this:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/google-threatens…You should read this section of the article you linked, the news sites want advance notice of any change to Google's algorithm so they can tweak their pages to appear higher on the list. They also want Google to hand over details of everyone's web traffic.
"Australia's proposal requires Google to notify Australian news sites of changes to its search algorithm 28 days in advance. Google has traditionally kept details about its algorithm secret and argues that disclosing this information to Australian news publishers would give those publishers an unfair advantage over other websites.
The new Australian law would also require Google to share traffic data with news sites, raising concerns about user privacy."
The news companies don't just own news sites, if you started a property site the people at realestate.com.au would have an advantage in SEO over you as they would have details of the algorithm that you don't have, if you started a media site you would probably always appear below foxtel, etc.
Large media companies are using their power to lobby the Government the force big tech to pay to keep them in business, if you think that the politicians forcing this through aren't getting favourable coverage in other areas as a result, I have a bridge to sell you.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/google-threatens…
Thanks, good article. Most of the Aus news reporting of it has been very unbalanced and useless for understanding the proposed code properly.
Once this becomes law, it will be interesting to see the quality of search results once Aus news sites get hold of Google's proprietary search algorithms. Search for funny cat videos, and the first 100 results could soon be of irrelevant Aus news links before you get to the first funny cat vid. Google then has to pay these Aus news sites for showing these links, regardless of relevance and quality, even if you don't click on them.
The other interesting impact will be on the quality of Aus news. If Aus news sites get paid from Google for simply showing a link, then income for news sites could be driven more by maniupating search rankings of useless articles rather than producing quality articles that ppl want to read.
Google's just bluffing, they have such a dominance in Australia it wouldn't make sense to leave. There not worried about Australia, but if they pay for news here it would encourage other countries to follow suit.
It's similar to the plain packaging on cigarettes. When plain packaging was introduced the tobacco companies spent 10's of millions suing the government and media campaigns, but since then dozens of countries have followed Australia's lead.
Yes. Agree completely.
They're not bluffing, they probably don't care about the money but there's no way they're going to hand over details of their search algorithm and web traffic to the news publishers. It's also probably completely impractical from a technical perspective to give news sites 28 days notice of any change to their algorithm. They have teams of people constantly changing it, any minor bug would need at least 28 days to fix.
They're also worried if they have to pay to link to news, what's stopping Government's making them pay to link to every other site on the internet, that would completely break the model of a search engine.
The advertiser (Google) should pay the party (everyone else) who is being advertised.
Interesting.
IMO if anything it's the news outlets bluffing Google. They clearly are just after a cash grab, if anything Google search pushes people to their article (and therefore website).
It's a very dangerous sook these news outlets are having. Imagine if other websites, such as JB or whatever, go to Google demanding payment for linking to their content: "Hey! We went to the EFFORT of posting up the photo of this vaccuum cleaner AND we even copied and pasted the description from the manufacturer website! We deserve more money! How dare you use the description on your search results! We did that!". Imagine if they went to other search engines and did this. Good luck to the consumer trying to find information as fast as possible, they'd have to either use the search function on one website (destroying perspectives, imagine if everyone just used Murdoch rags like news.com.au for their news) or go through each news website looking for information that they need, costing them time.
Such a silly and lazy way to get more money. The American way, sue anyone who you don't like, LOL! And it's not even a smart way to go about it lol. Imagine if stores sued Google Maps and said "OI! You did not ask us permission to show our store on Google Maps! How dare you! We're going to sue you now!"… when Google Maps could be the very reason they have the footfall levels that they do. Absolutely absurd, stupid, and basic. It's as if whoever is calling for this has no idea what they are doing.
If I was Google I would get a list together of all the media companies complaining and purge them all. Put a DMCA type notice in the search results and provide links to similar content.
Once the media sites visitors plummet over night they will cry uncle.
Also you can't blame Google for the loss of jobs in journalism - it was an industry that turned its nose up at the internet and missed the writing on the wall until it was far too late..
That and the low quality of journislm thse days always sensationlist - lol, every night "well, 1000 people have died (concerned face), next is Karen with the weather (happy face)"
Mate, the poor quality journalism is the direct results of current generation favouring cheap catchy news, they're just following customers taste, better put the blame on twitter and tiktok
The current quality is directly related to funding. I was at a dinner event 2 years ago and a retired editor for a very large news outlet was at my table. I broached the subject or the quality and clickbait headings etc and he was blunt, he hates it, the writers and journalists despise it. But the PUBLIC demand it, and they demand it by what they click on and view, he said he retired early as he hated having to not just allow that sh!t, but to actively encourage it otherwise his staff would not have a job anymore as advertising revenue has been siphoned away by google et al. You get what you pay for, and currently we pay google who in tern pay a fraction of that to the content producers in the way of ad revenue.
Exactly right. It's a fact that sensationalised content adds revenue and the more opinionated and extreme those views the now likely you'll get more $$$.
It's worse for private media companies as they're reliant on funds through subscriptions (clickbait & sensationalism). I'm looking at Fox and Sky news here.
The most worrying aspect is that the 'general' public (including us) fall into this trap and believe this crap.
Public funded news is actually less bias and more neutral (but again, if you've been listening to the same boat commentary (brainwashed) or already have biases formed - you'll likely think they're too far left).
From what I read quickly, Google had a trial and removed the sites that demanded to be paid but now the Government is saying they can't just remove them, they have no choice but to pay and keep showing the news sites.
The only issue is that if Google does that, then Australian Government will fine them for unfair practices!
Go figure!
So, Google is rightly threatening that it might pull out of search business in Australia.
Who suffers then?MediaCompaniesShootingThemselvesInTheFoot
Who cares?
It's a search engine, not food or water or anything involving life or anything remotely serious.
The news outlets themselves would probably care.
Every small business that advertises online, everyone who buys from them would care. I’ve seen first hand what happens when a company gets dropped from the Google first few pages. Less traffic means less sales means less jobs and more debt for the business. It could actually put a lot of other businesses in a bad place for a long time until they figure out other ways to attract customers, given so many would come from Google searches.
It's a search engine, not food or water or anything involving life or anything remotely serious.
People's business depend on the traffic sent by that search engine. This not 1990s's anymore where you dont care about the search engine traffic.
Maybe Sensis search engine will rise from the dead? :)
Blue Cat on 23/01/2021 - 18:38 Comment score below threshold.
