Google Escalates Dispute with Australia by Threatening Search Shutdown
wsj.com
wsj.com
Google has been fighting this basic idea across Europe as well, and just recently came down on the side of accepting French antitrust terms to pay out news publishers for snippets or even headlines of news in search. I personally think the French antitrust regulators held their ground well in the sense that withholding search access to further a Google news property seems clearly like antitrust abuse.
That said, Australia's news market (as well as many other European news markets) have so effectively captured their own regulators that it's just likely all downside for consumers all around. Access to independent news will decrease, competition will decrease, and everyone will rejoice at the Pyrrhic victory over the global behemoth that is Google regardless of the benefits to the consumer, which were never the concern in the first place. Facebook will quickly follow suit, and there will be another celebration of the loss of independent media access by the masses.
IMO, this kind of thing is really the true censorship apparatus at work: the censorship of ideas across journalism broadly.
There is another revolutionary search company coming along that works in a completely different way and is not dependent on collecting user data. And they're not built on top of bing or google.
I'm waiting for them to come out, but they're getting ready and they'll do a Show HN a few weeks later.
Anyone going head-on against google will lose.
I think the strategy will be many, many smaller search engines, focused on niches. Curated by their care-takers who wear their expertise and biases in a transparent way.
I'm quite opinionated here because this is my focus in 2021
They're attempting the search problem is a completely different way.
They're getting ready for public launch. Google overplayed their hand, they'll pay the price rather soon. Do not ever blackmail countries.
Facebook and Google search have no leverage like they think. Any country can insta ban them like China did, and have their own alternative at this point if they talk too much and don't follow the local laws. They'll figure it out rather soon.
They need Australia more then Australia needs them.
In the past only China scale countries could afford to ban companies that bully states. Now even medium sized countries will have a level playing field. Follow the laws or get out.