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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would that mean no Google Maps ?
actually a good question.
Google maps sometimes links to pictures of what you are looking for, or puts a link to the website for your destination up. That might become something that gets covered by this law.
I don't think Maps will go, but the bells and whistles and fancy extras might disappear.
prob something like that
What will happen?
Life will go on in one way or another..
Pretty well every second story on news.com.au is a straight lift from social media, if anything FB etc should be charging News corp not the other way around!
So many times there is a scrape from dashcams Australia and/or Reddit or tiktok.
Someone at news.com.au is actually paid to monitor Paige Spiranacs Instagram and write stories about her comments on the length of the Greg Norman's Dong FFS.
Are they paying Paige or Greg for that matter?!
If Murdoch media companies end up getting paid by Google, will they stop advertising crap on their news websites and just show actual news?
Google should just buy Newscorpse. Problem solved.
So does the new proposed law only apply to Google?? What about Bing and DuckDuckGo? Are they also need to pay? If yes, will they pay? Are they willing to pay or will they leave like Google as well?
dont worry if google loose they are next and will fall like dominoes
Australia's media (duopoly) has failed with a hard paywall, so it wants Google (monopoly) to provide the pay without any of the wall.
Neither side will win much sympathy.
What do you think will happen?
And we live happily ever after.
Seriously, I’m glad if it will happen. Because then other nations will too stand up against them and soon they will have to reconsider their decision / make amends. Google search is good but not irreplaceable. (i will miss the google lens though)
We'll all start using Huawei phones and welcome our new overlords.
If google leaves, I don't see why they would withdraw Android. Android isn't subject to the same laws as google search.
Can you Bing that?
Off to Amazon echo and welcome Huawei
The searches won't be localised, so it will be harder to find relevant content.
we could add suburb, city or Australia
you can totally get a VPN for free that works perfect for this. Sign up for something like AWS Free or Oracle Cloud, install openvpn server, and youre good to go
I'll get my 93yr old nanna to do just that
If you have to pick side, pick one of the lesser evil. Google search has near monopoly now only because people find that it gives the best results. Back in the early 2000, no other companies really made an effort to make search better. And no one has been trying even today. So Google goes unchallenged because of its own merit.
Meanwhile, the News corp has monopoly because it has taken over and crushed other competitors using dirty tricks. Most people do not conciously choose to read/listen to news because of the quality journalism, but because of sensationalism and unfair advantage given to the News corp.
Even more in this case, the Media conglomerate has shown that they have a significant control over our politicians and can make new laws to their advantage.
I think this was true once but these days when I search Google, the results aren't that great anymore. Lots of sponsored advertising mixed in with search result, near-total loss of 'little guy' websites which used to be so interesting.
they won't leave Australia.
I think the nuclear option is that google news will disable articles to AU publications except for the few major ones they strike a licensing deal with. All the little media outlets will more or less go out of business.
I'm siding with the google on this. These new laws are like the EU ones passed a couple of years ago. It's a boneheaded move, and no corporation can be expected to enter into licensing agreements with 80,000+ different media outlets. It's not feasible even if they tried. No one has the time to talk to that many people. The sensible thing to do is pull out or only deal with a small number of major players so they can cover most of the readership.
If Google does this, Gmail, Youtube, Maps, Android, Google Play store, will still function because they aren't affected. But AU news channels on youtube might get blocked. The rest of Google's non-news based services won't close because they continue to make money.
Blocking google search is a dumb idea and Google would not be stupid enough to do that. They only need to block access to the things that require them to pay.
I think the nuclear option is that google news will disable articles to AU publications
The new law specifically prohibits Google from doing that. It's search all or none, that's why Google is talking about leaving, I would too. It's been framed as a "threat" but I see it as the only reasonable option available.
then they will make it so you get search results from AU news sites, but there won't be a headline or image, or summary. It will just have a link to SMH, or The Australian, etc.
Non-AU sites will still get the thumbnail, headline and brief summary.
It's not about snippet or image. Google has to provide links AND pay for providing the links.
@nfr: Who in their right mind would want to pay you money just to give you traffic (which you depend on)? If I'm bringing clicks to your site, you should be paying me, not the other way around. Without us sending people to you, your traffic will fall off, and you'll close up.
If this is what I'm presented with, I would pull out also. This is very short sighted.
Google doesn't make money on news. The ad revenue they get is to finance operation costs. If they pull out of linking to news, they don't lose money.
They won't leave but if they did it would be fantastic for the entire IT industry in Australia. Think of all the services they get to replace.
Its amusing you think those services would be replaced by australian companies lol
It's sad that you think they couldn't.
Did you know Google maps kicked off with Google buying out the Aussie start up Where 2?
they had to get the data somewhere…..where maps was actually quite good. Poor startups get bought out by large companies. IMO large companies cannot invet only startups can
you might be surprised how reliant some IT departments are on "googling" solutions - no one knows everything.
The household line "Just google it" will be replaced with "just bing it" or "just yahoo it".
Exactly. Google is pretty crap these days, I usually have to switch to Yandex for a lot of searches that are saturated with SEO
more like just F$%^ it is the typically household line
I dislike Google having pretty much a monopoly on searches but don't think bringing in a new law like this. Will do any favours for competition and actually make the situation worse.
Giving media companies the power to rank higher in searches will enable them to crush smaller competitor's in their space.
Enforcing this law will allow Google to afford to post the news they want in their search results as they can afford to pay for the news sources, but will hurt competitor's (DDG etc) in their space not being able to afford to pay news company's.
I really don't see this as a win in either direction for the people. I see this as a win between two massive entities. I would rather see incentives to create more competition, tax breaks for startups and mid size business, more support for local business media and tech wise etc . And more of a reform on the behmoth companies tax evasion techniques.
I dislike Google having pretty much a monopoly on searches but don't think bringing in a new law like this.
Will do any favours for competition and actually make the situation worse.
If Google leaves, Yahoo or Bing will take over as the de facto search engine. They will then get as big as Google was. Then they will be subject to the same government laws Google (and Facebook) have been singled out for. Then they too will withdraw because what's being asked is unreasonable.
If this was aimed at breaking google's monopoly, this is naive. I cannot see a world where there are 20 search engines all with 5% market share, all of them being just as viable. People don't want choices. They just want the best, and one size fits all so they don't have to jump around until they get what they're looking for. They want one search engine that can do everything.
Google most likely won't leave as they are currently the monopoly here. they have the resources to strike deals with media and the ability to do so. I also can't see a work where there is 20 or so search engines with 5% of market share but people do want choices otherwise platforms like DDG wouldn't exist.
they have the money to pay the whatever cents per click they would have to pay. What they don't have is the time to set up these agreements. There are just too many news sites out there. If it ends up losing them money, they'll just stop linking to news.
If Australia succeeds in getting Google to set up accounts with every news site, then other countries will do the same, and then google will have to deal with millions of sites on an individual basis. Not even they have the resources to talk to everyone.
A monopoly is useless if it leads to losing money and laws that can't realistically be complied with.
@lostn: Well I would assume the governmen and all search engines would proceed with as much automation as possible to setup the agreements (automated pipelines, general agreements etc) as the law would apply to all search engines.
Even from an enforcement point it would require some serious work to make sure every agreement between media company and search engine has been fulfilled. I have not looked at how they are going to implement the new law, and what the processes are but I would be surprised it was a truly manual process.
@TimboAus1234: the process that the EU forced Google into is indeed a manual process. But their requirements were less stringent than AU's. Google said if you do this, we just won't put thumbnails, headlines or summaries on your links.
I assure you it will be no different here. If it could be an automated process where all google would have to do is pass on some or most of its revenue from ads, they would take that over pulling out of Australia. Pulling out means no revenue and no market share. If they could retain 10% of their ad revenue and pass on 90%, and also maintain their monopoly down here, don't you think they would just take that option?
No. The reason they're backing out is because it's too difficult to do what they're asked to do. It's not about the money. If they are willing to pull out entirely, then they get no money all, which is even worse. And their absence gives competitors a free market. Why would they prefer this over just paying the news sites?
They're no being stingy and unwilling to share their ad revenue. Someone like that would not pull out. You're giving up all revenue if you pull out, and it's going to your competitors which is no better than just sharing it.
It is not just Google and Facebook but all other search engines will also be affected by the new regulations right? Basically the only outcome is for those search engines to pay whatever the Australian government asks for and increase the advertising fees in Australia to eventually recoup the costs from Australian consumers?
so far they have singled out G and FB. The two market leaders I guess.
If G leaves, someone else will fill its place and eventually grow big enough to get singled out also, and we'll be full circle.
So the Regulations specifically state Google Australia and Facebook Australia? Haha if so that ‘targeted’ robbery. If I was Google Australia I would just advertise on the Google landing page “Due to the targeted engine search fees imposed by Australian government we are going to increase our advertising charges so the costs will be passed on back to Australian consumers. Thanks for your understanding.”
one one hand, i don't much care for the way Au Govt is handling this.
on another hand I dislike the thought that media outlets want some money from google because their articles show up in a search.
on another hand I am also not a google fan but them spitting the dummy over this feels like a very hollow threat.
also, i have 3 handson another hand I dislike the thought that media outlets want some money from google because their articles show up in a search.
Articles showing up on a search engine is how people find and connect to these articles in the first place.
Without a search engine, you are going to manually visit every news site to look for your news and hope you find it, if not you have to try the next one.
Google is doing these news sites a bigger favor than they are doing google.
And somehow Newscorp thinks it deserves money for showing up in google search results. That's how out of touch Newscorp is, and its incredible the LNP will go to any lengths to support daddy Murdoch.
Rich people have always influenced elections
I think NC are happy with an outcome where people are forced to go directly to news websites, because many people will default to theirs and never stumble across the alternatives
Without a search engine, you are going to manually visit every news site to look for your news and hope you find it, if not you have to try the next one.
And probably have to use their internal 'powered by google' search engine, that I assume will no longer be powered by google - and hence be absolute crap.
It’s a little confusing to me why people support this OTHER than “I don’t like google.”
Indeed, many comments here are along the lines of “who cares about Google”, “profanity google”, or “there are other search engines.”
It’s not about whether you like Google or not. Indeed, such a law would probably apply to Bing, DDG, etc in time… you think they’ll be exempt forever?
It’s about whether you believe search engines should give algorithm information to select big media news outlets so they can dominate our search pages more easily (being more equipped to game the indexing system) - and pay the media giants for the privilege, whilst driving traffic to their website.
I just don’t quite see any reason to support that.
Google’s business model or tax status isn’t a reason to invite media influence, and censor smaller independent news.
If google needs to pay tax, make them pay tax! But why should we give it to Murdoch and Fairfax?
Google would stay if the AU govt set up a middle man that handles all revenue google must pay and then distribute it to the outlets.
If they expect Google to directly pay the news outlets, that is a lot of negotiating for deals they will have to do (every outlet big or small would need to enter into a separate licensing agreement with google), and a ton of accounting to keep track of. There's no chance anyone would do this.
The govt is the one that has to compromise here. It's unreasonable to expect any one entity to have to enter into a license agreement with every single site that writes news.
That's still wrong though. Why should any search engine pay for providing traffic to news sites? And even if you defy common sense and make them pay, why only pay news sites? My wife has an online business, why not pay her for her content too? Why only pay Murdoch and his media buddies but not the peasants? This new law is embarrassingly stupid and wrong for Australia.
yes I agree 100%. They shouldn't have to pay at all.
But the fact that they have to enter into agreements with every outlet is the bigger issue for google than them having to pay to link a site. Google is a giant and can afford this. They have the money to pay for it. What they don't have is time to talk to everyone. In the end they're going to have to hire a ton of people to do this, and then it becomes not economically feasible.
My wife has an online business, why not pay her for her content too?
Yes the govt should be doing things to support small business, but this code does the opposite. It'll only support the big news sites with money and give them proprietary search algorithm info which will ensure even low quality articles stay on top of search results to get them even more money, at the expense of OzB, small business and content creators who'll get no such money and lower search rankings.
Google are actively anti-Australia, best for them to go anyway.
Just look at their Australia Day doodle and the lack of any mention of our national day.
Google are actively anti-Australia, best for them to go anyway.
it's more like Australia is anti-common-sense.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210125/01182246110/googl…
so whats next make amazon pay libraries/news agencies because they have kindle unlimited or gift free e-books at times
or elon musk pay for cutting out the NBN
or microsoft to pay linux users
or ebay international pay for taking customers from Australian shops
or the french pay for taking jobs from our ship builders
or solar panel wind turbines users pay for taking coal mining jobs
or you tube pay per click for all the copyright content they stream
or netflix pay the cinemas and drive ins
or uber to pay the taxis
or people who are self sufficient pay the power/water/food suppliers
or near map pay for taking revenue from ubd/gregorysWhere does it stop?
I agree with all points you make except the first line and last.
How do we make them do this and implement your solution?
Become a donor to the liberal national party or be a hillsonger have a winge and cry And all your problems are solved.
If google leave as a search engine in Australia are they going to go after all the other search engines in Australia?
Wake up Australia its nothing but a protection racket from the LNP crime gang
Who shut down Australia's manufacturing industry in the past eight years?
Who employed the french because we could not build a canoe?
Who said fiber to the node was the future?
Who supports a gas and coal future?
Who bought oil to store in USA?
Who cried about the debt disaster and then tripled it?Reap what you sow voters
Didn't they already make uber pay the taxis for their own failure lol
I recall a $1 aus per trip fare a while backNSW only
Uber and taxis pay $1 for every ride for five years for compensation to some for their taxi license being devaluedThe tax applies to every trip made in taxis, hire cars and ridesharing services like Uber
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-30/uber-sends-out-email-about-nsw-governments-$1-tax-on-rides/9376686so the government bails out failing businesses that don't adapt to changing times, and this bailing out is paid for by successful businesses?
If only they would do that for small businesses too. But those guys don't employ anyone so I guess they're not worth saving.
What will happen? They would comeback later since they lived 😂
This is a joke.
Murdoch and his puppet are not happy with many people choosing what they want to be fed to them for news.
They losing money so trying to extort money from google plus trying to get them to promote their sh*t opinionated news.
Better yet they are hoping google leave so everyone will have few options but the rubbish they try to feed us in their media.
Many now do not watch Tv or buy newspapers especially newscorp so they have to find another way lures us in.
It's not about google and the tax they paying there are worse offenders than them in Oz and most of them are Morrison buddies.
It's all about you and what you choose to search or read, they want you to focus on African gangs, rather than the social and financial mayhem that is happening/coming to this country. More than $1 Trillion dollars in debt with nothing to show for it and printing more money while shifting the focus by Muppets to distract us, well its not really working anymore because the alternative fact based news focus is not mostly under their control. So they would throw a wild card every now and then like their right wing loonies calling this " Google Vs the Australian People". Remember They don't want Google money rather they want them to adjust to their model " Hence the algorothium clause" or make them leave if possible so we have no other alternatives but to watch their news and reports. They are dreaming of a china style firewall but coming from google and facebook withdrawing instead.You'd still be able to go to Google.com or Google.co.nz for search, unless the gov actively blocks those domains.
google is the best search engine and just so convenient to use with all of its other integrated applications.
DuckduckGo's capabilities do not compare at all to Google's.
Just remember, everything you read about this is a scare tactic from the media.
This the story:
The large media lobbied the government to make companies like Google pay for linking to their content.
They went to the government because individual negotiatons would result in their content being removed, and their competitors would remain.
Google has responded stating they will turn off local search in Australia. This is not turning off Google, but turning off Australia specific results.
Google would still be usable, but would be less accurate for Australia. It's still likely to be more useful than bing.
The compromise, which is likely, is that Google will just block the news websites from search.
It's a stupid, protectionist law pushed by newscorp to get money for nothing, and us being sold to the gullible as "a pushback on Google", when it's really not.
A true pushback on Google would be changing tax laws, but this will distract and dazzle the idiots.
The compromise, which is likely, is that Google will just block the news websites from search.
Actually that's not an option for Google. The Government's demand has been clear, Google must provide links to news sites and pay for the links. (Unless google blocks all news sites, not just Australian)
If news sites don't want to be on Google search, they would have opted out of search already. They don't need Google to block them.
We'll adapt and use another search engine. Google is the loser here, as they would be throwing away alot of ad revenue which is linked to their search engine.
until that other search engine gets big and is subjected to the same singling out that google got, and then decides to also withdraw.
"you search something and we just give you links" [ from her video ]
Missing that they make a shit ton of money from their ads ( that they display first, then they follow up with google map and only basically on second page you can see the links )
That they spy and track everything you do online or track your movementsThe Brave browser is pretty good
I am happy to pay a subscription of $10 a month for Google services.
Ten bucks might not seem much to you
What about the unemployed the pensioners the disabled the low wage earners the one income family the students who don't live at home? do they just get left behind?We have already seen the pensioners forgo a pay rise meanwhile the politicians received a hefty pay rise
You could pay it for them i guess YEAH I didn't think so.
They can use Bing.
If they go they go. Not the end of the world.
Is a bad sign when people rely on Only one company.So google did propose a solution to fund media without breaking the way search engines work.
https://about.google/google-in-australia/an-open-letter/
What happens if the law is passed?
The ability to link freely between websites is fundamental to Search. This code creates an unreasonable and unmanageable financial and operational risk to our business. If the Code were to become law in its current form, we would have no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia. That is the last thing I or Google want to have happen—especially when there is a way forward that allows us to support Australian journalism without breaking Search. We think that would be a bad outcome not just for us, but for the millions of people and businesses across Australia who use Google Search every day.
Nothing because they won't.
What will happen to devices like Google Home? Google Pixel phones?
Consumer law would absolutely destroy them in the courts if they tried to cripple services/products they sell in Australia.
What about companies that use Google drive/cloud services?You really think they would give up hundreds of millions of dollars by pulling out of an entire country, just to avoid thousands of licensing fees?
In the insane instance that they are not bluffing, just migrate to DuckDuckGo which is better anyway.
only google search is leaving. Other google products are staying.
Google home's functionality may decrease though, since it depends on google search.
"Google home's functionality may decrease though, since it depends on google search."
This is exactly the point.
i'm sure they will find a loophole around that. They have an army of expensive lawyers. They know what they're doing.
I think Labor would run on "bringing Google back" at the next election. That's why I think the libs will back down.
change is inevitable
one day there will be no google, for anyone. life will go on, we will all adapt.
Life without Google will be a long period (years) of adjustment and trial and error by others. The services they offered to us for free like Google Maps and speech recognition are enormous. I can't imagine the next ten years of my life would revert back to what it was like before 2000, using Gregory's and White and Yellow Pages.
People will commit mass suicide if Google leaves.
We should give them whatever they desire so Australia can be happy.
What's to stop Google from setting up category specific search engines that don't include news media? i.e.Google for books which would be similar to Booko?
The Government can't really dictate to Google what categories they are allowed to create search engines for. Obviously Google aren't going to bother changing their current business model for a small island country. I do wonder if ACCC Chair Rod Sims fully understands how IT works or he is just the guy fronting the media for Rupert and the LNP?They could just disable all news searches in their AU version of google search. You can still use search, but all news sites are blocked from results (including non-AU news sites).
I hope Google will leave just to teach the government a lesson, since they will then force other companies to leave too.
Google will still work fine, I don't need localised search, you can go that within the US site.
corona happened, some die some survive, life goes on
For the nay sayers, if Google will and can afford to leave China with a population of 1 billion, Google will leave Australia.
Yes, there are search engines, but they're a hit and miss. Tha's why Google is so popular. Bing with Edge is probably the next option. It will still take a while for MS to catch up.
What makes them scared is that Australia can set a precedence. They can afford to leave Australia, but what if other countries start copying AU? Are they going to leave those countries also?
lol, google didn't have choice when they left China, they were fighting the unwinnable war against the CCP and CCP backed chinese tech and believe me they're still butt hurt if you talk about it, and still trying to find their way back to China everynow and then, same story with Facebook. Google was great a while ago when they ventured out and far to give the world the better side of techworld but now they're just another media-tech corp trying to milk out every cent of consumers and other business just to feed their grad with 6 figure salary and let them dose off on lunchbreak.
So the government is trying to persuade MS to pick up the pieces if Google leaves. So what happens when MS becomes too big and powerful in Australia just like Google Mr Morrison, are you going to kick them out, too?
What if MS doesn't want to be treated like Google? So the reason why you are legislating is that the media which is majority-owned by Mr Murdoch company complained.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-31/frydenberg-tells-zuck…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nL6XBJ5CoXo&list=LL&index=10…
Typical business always pass extra cost to customer and customer pays for it.
For fun, google should make search premium service and allow user to exclude news result from showing up.
If news result is served than user is charged but if user choose to opt-out than search is free. Default option is news links are visible to user.
This way google is not blocking or filtering news result but user is.
I thought Google Search exiting Australia might be a lose-lose situation, but apparently there's going to be a winner. I can see all those "SEO" marketing companies are now advertising page 1 placement on BING!
So are bing going to be forced to pay the news sites for providing links to news like google is being forced?
google should stay and not provide any news links at all and make bing pay for them all
But I feel this is just going to be the beginning. Once Google no longer has a significant presence here, they may take everything else with them and we'll end up with no Google services just like in China since they have no reason for giving Australia a free ride. That would really sux. Android Auto will be a thing of a past and whatever else technological advance Google will create in the future that countries like in America and Europe will enjoy except us because of the stupid legislation. So life goes on, but the period of adjustment will be slow and painful. So it's more than about searches.
Paul Fletcher is way too naive to think that Google is just bluffing. If nothing is left with Google except the name in this country there's going to be a lot of backlash for years to come.
Bing will be happy to take up the slack since MS been trying since Win95 to gain a foothold with something substantial. Whether they'll ever be as good as Google is debatable.
Strangely enough, without the accuracy of Google algorithm more news will miss out, especially the small ones such as The Guardian and the very jobs the government is trying to protect will lose quicker.
Google? What’s that?
I find askjeeves to be quite helpful navigating to my bebo and myspace accounts.