Communications Minister touts the opportunities of a Google-less Australia
zdnet.com
zdnet.com
The frankly embarrassing attempt to siphon money from Google into Murdoch’s pockets is simply the current conservative government ensuring they get excellent media coverage at the next election.
If I have to use a VPN to get decent search results because of this nonsense I will NOT be pleased.
Good news then because you can use Duck Duck Go and get reasonable results without being stalked around the internet or run the risk of your parents clicking a scam ad because 'it has 5 gold stars beneath it'.
Google is a worldwide monopoly. No one has any chance of negotiating with them. Even a country as it turns out without them threatening complete pull out.
I see this as strong leadership standing up to monopolies.
I would prefer the free market to sort it out honestly but what chance does anyone have against them.
imo it doesn't matter that many of these local outlets are backward, racist and populist rags (never criticizing the Australian concentration camps, or failure of capturing the idiocy of the AAbill, or whatever justifies being outraged about etc), the big guys (FB/Google) are expert in doing the same thing but at scale and with better PR (+ they can do so without paying their taxes).
As long as it hurts BigTech it's the right move no matter what "appears" right or wrong. These firms and their management are parasites and they need to be treated as such until they a) pay their taxes and b) respect local laws.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_immigration_detenti...
We would also like the Murdoch media and/or tech giants to pay tax in Australia, yes, but neither do at the moment.
I get that it's trendy right now for elected non-technical bureaucrats to whine against tech giants. But if they are really avoiding taxes why not simply... charge them for that? Hint: They can't because all the taxation schemes used by these companies are legal. EU bureaucrats could simply write a tax code that makes them illegal but they won't!
All the whining also distracts peoples from asking themselves why European policies failed to grow a healthy growing tech ecosystem like in the US.
It's similar to Germany where, i.e. book prices are fixed, and every store must sell for the same price, whether they like it or not. Of course, they have a choice not to sell.
Google is like the mob, in that you literally have to build a whole new law around dealing with it (RICO) that lets you come at the edge and use that to come at the head of the snake.
They can go along with it and then report the impact of it on their 5bn yearly profit and then they can leave not out of spite.
I suspect it’s a tiny impact on their profits ans this is just an attempt to build support from public. Problem is everybody hates them now. I’d gladly use other products if they didn’t have a monopoly.
Why can't we allow all Australian businesses and individuals to receive payments from Google's money hose if they want to?
Why can't we standardise some API for doing so? robots.txt or .well-known/summary-fees.json or something of that sort would work fine.
Why can't Google hide results that cost too much to show? Surely choosing your suppliers is a foundational principle of any market.
I don't have an ideological problem with charging them for showing a link summary or regulating what price negotiation should look like, I have an strategic problem with this oddly specific and coercive way of doing so.
Sorry I don’t meant to come across as contrarian, but as a European and now Aussie citizen, the quality of reporting is really horrendous. This type of law doesn’t seem like anything designed to save the future of free, independent journalism, but simply the old boys club of the liberal party handing out free money to their mates in Newscorp.
Not that the alternative (surveillance capitalism is much better though, but at least it doesn’t impose contradictory logic onto the basic infrastructure of the Internet (text and http).
Have you checked your families google app/news feed or whatever they are calling that thing these days. Its like Meghan Markle is the most important person in the world.
I mean initially it was fun to rib my Dad about why he is getting so many Meghan Markle updates. But now I am just scared to even look at phones in the family, given the amount of addictive garbage that is being pumped into them non stop.
The algo is just picking up on the same trends tabloids did. Tons of people want to read that stuff.
I wonder whether Google might withdraw their service for a day or even just a few hours, to apply pressure on the government.
No matter which country. news organizations have to eventually find a way to organize and deal with their internet providers to get a fee based on quality and quantity of news they provide.
News and editorials have to be separated. Editorials and blogs should not be paid for via such funding in my opinion.
ISP funding of various type of blogs, media, arts, etc should become elective via bundles that people select otherwise.