If Google threatening to leave can undo the law, than Google knows they can threaten it again and again, any time they don't get what they want.
Stand firm, Australia. Let them leave. You'll be better off without these bullies in your country.
Stand firm, Australia. Let them leave. You'll be better off without these bullies in your country.
* ' Ms Silva described the ultimatum as a "worst case scenario", adding: "It's not a threat. It's a reality". '
Note the authors description as 'ultimatum', while the plain language of the quote is "it's not a threat".
I'm not the biggest Google fan these days; but from what I know how Google operates [1], I don't think it's a threat either. I think Google would genuinely have to stop providing search.
[1] Google -as a search engine company pushes traffic to your site, which you can choose to monetize or not as you see fit. On their side the company monetizes their search engine by means of advertising in this case. If you ask for the traffic AND both sides of the money, there's no profit left for the search engine provider anymore, and they will be forced to shut down (in that region).
Any discomfort one may experience from that comment is misled, as the plain language clarified it’s not a threat.[1]
But more seriously, Google would not have to stop providing search.
For the most part, the code of conduct in question is regarding “content” while you’re talking about search engine results.
Google as a News Portal slurps content from publisher sites and you can get a gist of the news without leaving Google (see also Google’s AMP technology push which looked scarier at the time this dust up started).
Remember Google has sites such as https://news.google.com/, and remember how content creators and curators were not sure how upset to be over what Google did with Yelp reviews and the like. Using Google today, fewer and fewer searches return plain SERPs.
Certainly there are a couple sites in EU and elsewhere mad at having their search result links show up without getting paid for them, and for that, well, they should google robots.txt.
SERP snippets are one thing, structured content someone else spent money to bring together is another. For the most part, this is about usage of content.
1. Footnote: “Consequences of continuing to post here may include, but are not limited to, having additional postings posted.”
I may agree with you on the not-SERPs part. In which case Google might simply decide to stop doing that.
However, it was my impression that the Australian law pretty much also forces Google to pay for SERPs though; at which point they're snookered, and my previous point applies.
(If I'm wrong about the law forcing SERPs payments, then I'd be wrong about google needing to withdraw, and I'll withdraw the point)