Australia’s PM suggests Bing adequate if Google blocks searches | Hacker News Reader

Australia’s PM suggests Bing adequate if Google blocks searches

gizmodo.com.au

108 pointslazycrazyowl175 comments

Here's the full bill if you want to wade into it (PDF): [1]

This [2] may provide some helpful commentary.

From Google/Facebook's viewpoint, one of the more distasteful aspects which is rarely mentioned in most coverage is that they must give two weeks notice of algorithm changes to registered news businesses.

There's a perception in some circles that this is a fairly unnuanced money grab by the government on behalf of Murdoch media[3]. A perception that was not helped by earlier drafts excluding the public Australian Broadcasting Corporation and SBS from the trough. Two organisations the current federal government is seen as being hostile towards.

As I understand it:

- The bill would not allow Google to simply drop Australian news sites from search results (hello Spain News!), hence really only leaving the option to block Oz altogether.

- There is no acknowledgement at all of the value search engines provide to media organisations by the links provided.

- The forced arbitration conditions are quite... forceful. (I'm not really across this aspect.)

A common nickname for our our Prime Minister among his detractors is "Scotty from Marketing" [4]

In summary, when you say, "My way or the highway," perhaps you shouldn't get pissy when they choose the highway.

[1] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/bi...

[2] https://www.gtlaw.com.au/insights/its-here-news-media-digita...

[3] https://youtu.be/2BPLBIgKjN8

[4] https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2020/01/where-the-legend-of-sc...

Scotty from Marketing: my way or the highway

Google: the highway

Scotty from Marketing: we don't respond to threats[0]

[0]: https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-22/scott-morrison-goo...

From a foreign (non-US) perspective I find these Australian laws quite understandable, practical and rational.

Google and Facebook are both US companies, with a strong online presence and great influence in Australia (and other countries). But obviously it is in Australia's national interest to see that this kind of influence is directed by Australia themselves, rather than corporate or some foreign interest.

It is undeniable that due to overwhelming monopolist control that many of these foreign US companies have over today's internet, stronger government oversight and regulation is a must to protect the national interests and sovereignty of any democratic country.

To this end, ideally we need the regulator to mainly:

- Implement strong privacy rules in favour of the citizen (with strong emphasis in limiting data collection, sharing and usage without users permission, and ensuring data is stored not outside the country, among other things).

- Create legal standard "templates" of the "terms of conditions" (on behalf of the citizens) for the various common online services and force the corporates to use these, instead of the ever-frequently-changing and one-sided contracts they force us to accept.

- Ensure online discourse is limited from foreign influence (e.g. to fight foreign online troll armies that try to influence elections).

News Corp is a US company as well. But none of this is about influence or regulation and none of this touches upon anything related to privacy (although one of the slightly more conspiratorial theories is that News Corp wants access to more 'analytics' data, and this bill may enable that).

Google and Facebook are worse than a thousand creepy uncles as it relates to user privacy, but that's not what this is about.

From Australia's perspective, it is about controlling the dissemination of news online. And while some of the media outlets in Australia may be foreign, I am sure they also come under various Australian laws.

I see such laws on online companies as a precursor to the set up of an online regulator. It is inevitable with the range of laws cropping up that deal with online companies and issues related to them.

Corporates always avoid regulation till their influence on the government diminishes - then they themselves demand it for a more balanced and competitive environment. Once foreign corporates starts to feel that such laws are more and more one-sided and against their interest, they themselves will begin lobbying that a regulator be set up for their industry to hear their side and draft better and more balanced laws.

The fact that it is newsworthy to say something like this seems to indicate that Google is at least a de-facto monopoly in the search sector. It seems hard to argue against that when folks cannot even agree if there are any viable alternatives at all.... This is a huge problem that is only getting worse. I don't really see any way to fix this outside of government trust-busting. (But I have little faith in the bumbling of modern politicians in Australia or anywhere else...)

Personally, I use DuckDuckGo for searching and find the experience to be better than Google, but YMMV.

How can google be a monopoly if it is that easy to switch away? The truth is competing search engines are at least 90% as good as google, and literally a click away.

People don’t, and there is some browser default lock in, but it’s hardly like an electric grid, water or broadband monopoly. Or Standard Oil for that matter.

Other options are available and are good enough BUT people aren't using those other options. I mean an average guy doesn't even know about DDG and some educated guys do know about Bing but don't bother to use it. In real world, Google is synonymous with search.

I don't have the data available right now but I believe more than 70% Aussies are using Google. That is almost a monopoly.

>Other options are available and are good enough BUT people aren't using those other option

People choosing to not use other options that are easily available doesn't seem like something that should qualify Google as a monopoly that needs to be broken up (am not a lawyer, just a disclaimer).

Like, what is Google supposed to do here? Make their own search engine worse, so that users are incentivized to switch? Show people ads, recommending them to use competing search engines?

Mind you, I am not alleging that Google is not a monopoly or that it shouldn't be broken up. There could be other things that could qualify them for that, like bundling of Google Search as the default search engine with Chrome, semi-mandatory nature of Play Store on android just to be able to use google apps, etc.

However, just the sheer fact alone that most people prefer to use Google search (when there are plenty of easily available alternatives out there that the general public isn't willing to look into) shouldn't be valid grounds for an anti-monopoly lawsuit.

> what is Google supposed to do here?

We've seen this with MS already. Install Chrome - get either a random search engine assigned, or a randomised-order choice box.

Not arguing with you about this one, because I am trying to understand what you meant by "seen this with MS already" first. What did MS do? Asking because when you open the new Microsoft Edge browser, Bing is the default search engine.

I mean the browser antitrust case that forced IE alternatives years ago: https://www.news.com.au/technology/microsoft-windows-forced-...

This could be applied to the default search engine in Chrome (since it's Google owned as well)

I read the article in your link with the ruling regarding IE. All Microsoft had to do as the result was to offer a default browser choice screen during the installation experience for Windows OS (with IE still being there), and only in select 27 EU countries + 3 Scandinavian countries.

And on top of that, they don't have to do it anymore either, and MSFT is able to have (and actually does have) IE set as the default browser in EU again since late 2014 [0]. Which eventually transformed into Edge as the default browser, but you get the idea.

0.https://www.yahoo.com/news/weather/microsoft-no-longer-needs...

I mean, on one hand I agree with you (I found it pretty easy to not use Google Search). But I think my point is that if this was true for everyone, then we would not really be newsworthy that the PM thinks people can use Bing instead....

One technical aspect to consider is the number of devices/applications where Google is the default search. Does Australia have a plan to force a different default if Google shuts off Search? How would that affect contracts that Google has with other companies (e.g. Apple) to make its Search default?

Not everyone is technically literate enough to know how to change their browser's default search engine. Heck, some people don't know there are other ways to search the internet besides google.com....

I assume smartphone companies have an incentive to just switch, given that I don't think Apple et al want to leave their users without a search engine by default. They'll probably just switch over to Bing as well.

I think newsworthiness is a poor proxy for relevance or legal standing.

I personally agree with you. I also note Google is better at search than the Australian PM - I'd rather not have the Australian parliament forming an opinion on the order of my search results.

However, the monopoly argument would probably be that they are using their superior search engine to hinder competitors in other markets - eg, pushing Chrome/Gmail/Android.

> I'd rather not have the Australian parliament forming an opinion on the order of my search results.

It's sad to hear such opinions about trusting "corporates more than democracy" ...

Given Australian parliaments opinion on encryption and environmental issues I think he's right to not trust them on this....

Then who should they trust? Once people start losing faith in democracy then it's a very slippery slope - everyone needs reminding that democracy isn't just voting, it's your right to speak, organise and protest for change.

Nothing makes me lose faith in democracy faster than when eligible voters uncritically defend government as better than "corporates" because who else should we trust? This only reminds me that democracy isn't about trusting the government, it's about holding the government to account and refusing to give them unearned trust when they do stupid shit like this.

When it comes trusting corporates vs government the choice is actually quite clear - if they have faith in democracy then they know the government is accountable to them, then obviously they can only trust them more. You are right though that a healthy distrust of the government in power is essential for a healthy democracy.

Spot on. We have a direct ability to not just vote but also run for office in Australia. Even if you live in a safe electorate your senate vote certainly matters. Australian governance isn't perfect but it basically works, and Australia objecitvely has succeeded as a result, even when compared against nations with similar contexts e.g. Argentina.

Foreign-owned corporations are in no way subject to Australian citizens other than commercial motives. I don't blame them for that, but I support my government's desires to regular them on my behalf.

When people feel no need to click away, they don't, and stick with the default, and thus Google has a monopoly. A monopoly doesn't mean lock in or that consumers can't switch. A monopoly means domination or near total control of a market. And if Google leaves the Australian search market for others, someone else will probably end up with that monopoly depending on what Chrome's search, Android's search and iPhone search does.

That's not really a good indicator of monopoly. If the roles of Bing and Google were reversed here, the story would have been even more newsworthy.

When is the last time you saw someone (who was not using a Microsoft browser) use Bing search? I am not saying there are no Bing fans at all, but I have never met one....

Not sure I understand how it would be a big deal if the PM suggested that Aussies could live without Bing....

I am not saying that many people use Bing. I am saying that this kind of intervention would be a big story either way, because there would be people rightfully complaining that the government actions supports monopolists position.

I use Bing myself. Most of my searches are just hard urls or reddit+topic and Bing doesn't poison my results with amp links that don't retain my setting to use the browser and not the app. If you hate amp links like me then Bing is great.

Google being so good no one can replace them is good.

If Google abused that position so no one could replace them because they're no longer the best but still big, that's a problem. We're not there yet

Google Search is so good because it has access to exclusive data it collected in an immaterial way (not through search queries or crawling). Anyone can write a search engine, no one can write a search engine that's based on Google data. And no one can collect data similar to Google data, because this "Google has better quality so we have to use them" argument is also being used in a dozen other verticals.

They're free to do what Google did: spend billions on eb crawlers, offer extensive free services like Gmail and chrome and build their own datasets.

Plus, it doesn't really matter: it's not a problem for someone to offer a good service. It's a problem for them to offer a bad one and then force it on people because they're big.

Yeah, that's pretty much how monopolies (anti-competitive companies) work: you could replicate the entire Google ecosystem, but without doing all of that you can't compete with any segment of Google. It is not reasonable to require of any competitor in the search engine field to offer their own ad network, mail service, cloud service, cloud computing service, enterprise offering. This is illegal, as hopefully the anti-trust lawsuit will show. It's a smart business practice, but once you cross a certain threshold it is regulated by the government because it is no longer good for society.

I agree about barriers to entry helping Google maintain their monopoly. We disagree about whether monopolies themselves are illegal as you say.

From the wiki page laying out the US law in this (feel free to correct me if Aussie law differs?):

>The courts have interpreted this to mean that monopoly is not unlawful per se, but only if acquired through prohibited conduct.

>When enterprises are not under public ownership, and where regulation does not foreclose the application of antitrust law, two requirements must be shown for the offense of monopolization. First, the alleged monopolist must possess sufficient power in an accurately defined market for its products or services. Second, the monopolist must have used its power in a prohibited way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law

I don't think Google meets the second requirement. I believe we agree it meets the first?

Reading right after the end of your quote: "... Second, the monopolist must have used its power in a prohibited way. The categories of prohibited conduct are not closed, and are contested in theory. Historically they have been held to include exclusive dealing, price discrimination, refusing to supply an essential facility, product tying and predatory pricing."

Unfortunately for the prosecutors, the big tech companies have abused their power in ways that couldn't have existed in the past, so they will have to set precedents in these anti-trust cases - but the law does allow for prosecutors to claim that Google's behavior is abusive by the _spirit_ of the law. I hope they do a good job, because we'll need these precedents for the next few decades.

That's a fair response. Would you mind speculating on what Google are doing that breaks the spirit of the law and what new categories of prohibited conduct we might look forwards to?

I think there is something of a reckoning coming for FB, Google, Twitter etc around fake news. But I'd imagine that's a separate issue to antitrust.

All answers to this will have to be anecdotes, unless someone has access to internal memos that instruct managers to systematically engage in such manners. My personal belief, based only on friendly conversations with people who work and worked in big tech, is that the culture in those companies (especially Google) convinces employees that these "growth hacks" are valid, and that a winning variation in an A/B test immediately means "this is good for our users".

One example that I like referring back to is from a product manager I interviewed a few years ago. He was very proud that he was part of a team that realized that since Android has a lot of users and Gmail is the default browser, they can show content to people on Gmail on Android to promote other Google mobile products. No competitor of those mobile products could reach that kind of wide advertisements, and why did Google get to advertise there? It isn't like they paid the most for the ad spot, or had the best product (most mid- and low-tier Google products are _awful_) - it's because one group could go to another and tell them "please put this promotion over there".

And one that is more of a conspiracy, but there is evidence that comes up every now and then: Google AdWords has better targeting and data collection capabilities than any other network, because Chrome allows AdWords to collect data that other systems are blocked from collecting "due to privacy concerns". But somehow, AdWords getting that data isn't a privacy concern.

My belief is that this is because Google employees honestly in their hearts are convinced they are the good guys and it's OK for them to have this. I'm sure in some cases there's an exec that weighs in, but in so many cases it's Google's elitist and entitled culture that makes employees think that they are superior and infallible to employees of other companies, so it's OK for them to do this. And yes - there is corporate responsibility and liability for the creation and maintenance of such a culture, when it is so pervasive.

I'm not quite sure that we need new categories of prohibited conduct, when existing categories fit.

We could debate the particulars, gray areas abound here, but areas of concern include:

Tying: which is offering unrelated goods or services only as a bundle. Things like Android licensing (effectively) requiring Google search defaults to use the Google Play store (no longer the case in EU); possibly the Google(+) login requirement for YouTube account fits. By tying the otherwise unrelated small product with the big product, the small product gets more market share, and this can be abusive.

Dumping (or predatory pricing): selling (or giving away) a product below cost to drive out competiton. Android or Chrome could fit here; but the case is murky because the US (at least) is looking for harm to consumers, and sees free browsers and free OS for phone reducing the price of the phone as a consumer good. But there's some feedback loops here that aren't great for the consumer.

Something that comes up that's hard for me to put into a category is cross promotion. When Google highlights other Google services on search results, that sometimes feels abusive (or is reported as abusive). Especially when it's not really apropriate for the search query. This is the category news complaints seem to be in.

I think search is important enough that countries should consider it of strategic value to in house.

Australia outsourcing it to American companies leaves them open to media control by foreign governments

I'm quite sympathetic to your point of view. I'd love to see governments ensuring a plurality of media is available and higher quality, factual, pieces are promoted.

Sadly this isn't that. This would further entrench the murdoch empire that's a blight on most English speaking countries' media econ systems.

That's just not true. The proposed legislation does not overtly favour News Corp any more than any other Australian news organisation. News Corp will likely continue to dominate in Australia only because of its reach and it's ability to rely on a real estate website to make the books look good).

SBS, ABC, Guardian, Fairfax/Nine all get their share of the pie in the legislation.

yes, the terminology is getting distorted too much. monopolies are not illegal. the problem is if they are maintained by anticompetitive behavior

I think people are upset about social issues (wealth inequality, changing social structures etc).

I think that becomes anger at big institutions, from government to banks to "big tech".

I think people see Anti Trust as a way to bash big tech.

And no one stops to think "what are we actually trying to achieve here?". They just think something has to be done and this is something...

It's the other shit that Google pushes via their search monopoly that's the problem, not just the search monopoly itself.

I've been using DDG for the last few months. It's okish but sometimes I feel like I don't see the results I expect to find, I google them on Google (do you see what I'm doing? there is a reason for that after all) and I find them.

This is even more true for technical searches in my job (web development, mostly backend.) Google finds the answer, DDG less often so.

but the !g does make it easy to get Google results when needed.

Which would be unavailable if Google didn't provide search in your area.

I use DDG as my default search engine, and find that the results are usually pretty decent. But there's no question that Google has a larger and more comprehensive index, especially for more obscure "long tail" queries. So I still fall back to a Google search (it's easy -- just add '!g' to your DDG query and resubmit) about 10% of the time.

It wouldn't be the end of the world if I wasn't able (or willing) to use Google.

I didn't know about !g. I'm using Firefox with the old style separated URL and search fields. I click the search field and the Google button on the menu that opens under the search string. However !g is useful when I tweak ed the search string in the DDG page.

Yandex is a much, much better search engine than DDG. The only irritating part about it that since it is Russian, it often shows many Russian sites in the top results. The best part about Yandex is that it also conveniently allows you to also search on Google or Bing if you don't find their result satisfactory. This allows them improve their search while also not upsetting their users.

If the goal of abandoning Google is about privacy, surely picking Yandex is counter-productive? Unless you make the conscious choice of having one entity keep the information from the rest, which I agree can make a lot of sense.

Realistically I don't expect any benevolence from any of the corporates that run all the popular search engines. (Even DDG is a private company with millions of dollars invested in it).

So my choice, as you rightly guessed, is limited to compartmentalising data collection, I also wanted to choose the best non-US competitor of Google - Yandex (Russian), Baidu (Chinese) and (later) Qwant (European). Yandex is the best among them.

To further compartmentalise data collection, I don't use Yandex exclusively and sometimes go directly to specialised sites for the answer. (For e.g. Stackoverflow for programming queries, IMDB for TV and movies, Wikipedia for some queries, etc. ... this is now easy since browsers allow us to add custom search engines to them.)

> sometimes I feel like I don't see the results I expect to find

This gets brought up often but I wonder how much of that is just familiarity. Have you ever tried a different search engine if Google doesn't give you what you expected, or continued to either tweak the query or look further on Google anyway?

You could have a point. I tweak the query. Maybe after 20+ years I speak a query dialect optimized for Google.

I can't imagine Microsoft is anymore interested in paying these fees than Google or Facebook is. I think it's an empty threat, and likely its the Government trying to prove their serious (although, I suspect it won't pass its next vote). What Microsoft gets out of it, not sure.

I think he's just saying Google isn't the game in town. Having said that the whole situation is deplorable, it's not driven by valid concerns, just the Murdoch media in league with our weak government. I wish they'd picked a battle I could get behind.

Paying these fees to get Googles search traffic would probably be a steal, they need data to be competitive with Googles search

>I can't imagine Microsoft is anymore interested in paying these fees than Google or Facebook is.

AFAICT the law is targeted at Google and Facebook only, Microsoft would not have to pay.

This seems discriminatory as hell.

Monopolies deserve special discrimination

Of course it is. Whole law is just cronyism for Rupert Murdoch. He owns the Australian government.

Got them to fuck up our internet upgrade because it threatened his cable tv business. Now he's getting them to steal from Facebook and Google to subsidise his many newspapers. If that doesn't work hell probably just get them to subsidise them directly.

Google and FB are the initial targets due to size, but the draft isn't saying they're limiting the list.

I suspect that Microsoft _would_ be willing to pay those fees. A first world country that doesn't use Google Search would be a huge win for Microsoft

Paying the fees becomes way more attractive for Microsoft if Google refuses.

This is quite ridiculous. I’d say it’s obviously ridiculous but others may have a different point of view. The government there is eager to side with Murdoch and his friends for favorable coverage so that they can pocket money from this extortion stunt while disregarding the impact to its many many citizens. Suggesting Bing is good enough is stupid because if their citizens were to use it over google if google quits that market, what then ? Government goes after them and if it does what if Microsoft also gets out? And if government doesn’t then doesn’t that show to the world that it was personal with google? People shouldn’t be stupid. It’s a low bar to clear.

Bing has indicated it would be willing make government deals in exchange for eliminating the competition and being #1 in search.

Who wouldn‘t. It‘s not like they have anything to loose when it comes to search.

Is there anything that makes the following sequence of events unlikely?

1. google.com.au redirects to google.com

2. google.com stops indexing australian content

3. australians barely notice, except perhaps for the latency

4. australian content creators collapse

edit: 5. american content creators adapt and cater to their new audiences

My guess would be that Australian regulators could consider it as Google trying to play a loophole around their rules, so Google could be forced to exit the Australian market altogether.

Though I, personally, doubt it will get to that. Either Google will come to a satisfactory solution that won't piss off the Australian regulators or pre-emptively exit the market

People want local news and content, because they have lives outside of the Internet and they want to consume (at least partially) content that relates to their lives. How would American content creators create Australian local content without operating in Australia, and fall under Australian regulative protections?

I don't think many of them would be truly devestated by having to move outside of Australia to continue making content about Australia. The layer of abstraction might be good for them mentally

Being within Australia for "left-wing" creators like "FriendlyJordies" or "Juice Media" seem to be just a way to attract the Eye of Sauron from the right-wing media pundits and websites like "Junkee" that are heavily sponsored by large banks and fossil fuel companies

I think it's Google's position that the vast majority of people who go to Google's website don't actually go there to see the news. Hence why they're willing to remove news from search results all together. The regulation trys to prevent that, which is why they will have to remove their servers from AU.

Call your local newspaper and ask them about their subscription rates.

Wanting and being willing to pay for are two entirely different things.

3. Australians barely notice.

Searching for "plumbers in my area", "hospital near me", "Bondi Beach weather this weekend", "2021 Australian federal election" all starts to break or show dated results. Latency won't be the problem, relevance will be the problem.

Google has a bit of a problem here.

The majority of Australians are pretty indifferent/apathetic here. Murdoch vs Google is Goliath vs Goliath, nobody cares who wins, everyone hopes they both get wrecked in the process.

The best outcome here is if Google stops linking to news organisations in Australia.

Zero fucks would be given and independent journalism would be able to grow in a healthy environment.

Do they though? I want to see the Australian government crying to Google to return when they realize what they've brought upon themselves.

You live in a bubble. Most people find Bing and duck duck go adequate.

I don't, but I'm a special snowflake.

You also seem to think this government gives a fuck. It's constantly getting caught out and exposed as corrupt (for real, not hyperbole), but nobody cares,Murdoch prints it under the rug and people move on.

You think Australians will care about Google a month after being forced into Bing?

Anecdotally a lot of people I know, especially older people, don't know how to properly use the internet without google. Google is the default search engine on chrome, the most popular browser, and most of these people don't know how to change the default.

Does this mean that Microsoft (or its Bing subsidiary?) will not have to pay the same tax, even if it becomes the dominatn search engine in Australia? Or is it not an issue, because the relevant subsidiary of Microsoft makes no profit, and therefore the amount due will be zero?

I haven't a clue here, I'm just surprised.

It means that the regulation itself isn't the issue but Google is just afraid that it destroys the idea that they cannot be regulated, and that other countries will follow suit.

Obviously anyone would take the entire Australian search market for some rather mundane regulation. If someone came to you and said you can have an entire country worth of Google's market, you just have to fork over some money for news headlines you link to you'd say no?

Microsoft in contrast to Google is a diversified firm that doesn't really rely on avoiding regulatory scrutiny that much, so they don't care.

I'm guessing we haven't talked to Microsoft at all yet, and that they will pull out of Australia as well.

In the article Scott Morrison mentions that he's spoken personally to Satya.

Our PM claims to have spoken with Microsoft and they signaled a keen interest in coming onboard (the dodgy hand gesture made by the PM).

https://apnews.com/article/business-satya-nadella-australia-...

Microsoft are just excited at the possibility of a whole country being essentially forced to use Bing.

Australia might even form 90% of their user base.

Don't give them any ideas, maybe Nokia and Windows Phone will make a comeback there too and the WSB crowd will send NOK to the moon next

I see.

Clever salespeople do signal that, and particularly if they think the customer is about to piss off their competitors.

Microsoft's going to make zero profit in that subsidiary and your PM won't dare to pick a fight about the untaxed profit in other subsidiaries, because if both Bing and Google leave the Australian market, what's left? Taobao? Seznam isn't bad, I've heard, but hardly something the Australian PM would recommend.

Not sure if anyone's the same, but I find Google search the least sticky of their services, i.e. I could manage fine if forced to use Bing (probably not as good, but probably good enough), but I would really struggle if Gmail or Google photos access was axed in my region.

I'm the opposite - search is the only Google service I use (apart from occasionally recce-ing bike rides on Street View). I've tried to wean myself off it, and have succeeded for casual browsing on mobile, but for programming queries I don't find Bing or DDG anywhere near as good.

You could use DDG and then add "!g" at the beginning for your programming queries.

Right, which is what everybody does, and then develops a reflex for !g on every query because DDG really doesn't work well for any sort of technical query.

I keep hearing this, but personally fine that in the rare case I try !g for better results I don't get anything better.

I've been using https://www.runnaroo.com/ on some of my devices for a while and I very seldom need to do the DDG equivalent of !g.

The name alone seems like something that Australians might like.

> “Look, these are big technology companies. And what’s important for Australia is that we set the rules that are important for our people,” Morrison said.

When Morrison says "our people", he means Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-17/scott-morrison-murdoc...

If Google Search becomes unavailable in Australia it's going to be a disaster for many, many people.

I honestly can't believe this is happening.

I do not want to be forced to switch to Bing :/

It will be trivial to bypass in under 3 minutes, regardless of the method used to block.

Is Bing going to be forced to operate under the same constrains as Google?

No, at the moment, the law explicitly only mentions "Google" and "Facebook". That should tell you a lot about the people that lobbied/wrote it.

wtf I've never seen a law mention corporations specifically

In one of the states of Australia, there is a law that mentions someone by name: http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/vic/bill/cab2014300/ Was done as a stopgap just to make sure that it was impossible for him to leave jail.

Private bills have existed for for quite a while.

You have to understand that most places that inherited common law also inherited ‘parliament’s sovereignty’, the legal notion that no bill or law can constrain the power of parliament. Now that has been curtailed in quite a few places but the notion still fully exists (I believe it was used recently by the UK Supreme Court to force the government to give parliament a vote). Australia is such a place.

Even the US system had it to a degree. Originally the bill of rights only applied to the federal government, later Supreme Court rulings extended it to state law.

Can you share more details? Source? This kind of wording is alone unconstitutional in many countries.

Australia doesn't meaningfully have a constitution, it's just a declaration of powers of the various governments.

https://australianpolitics.com/constitution/text

Before you downvote, take a read yourself. This isn't sarcasm.

I'll concede that people are mentioned in it, my original comment wasn't completely correct.

  "In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted."

Not really a statement of rights so much as a statement that the native people of Australia are not people.

For completeness it must be noted that that was repealed by referendum in 1967: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_127_of_the_Constitutio.... (The related Section 25 remains, however.)

> This kind of wording is alone unconstitutional in many countries.

Australia's legal system is Common Law, inherited from Britain. You won't find any kind of enshrinement of rights in our constitution. It doesn't work that way.

> Can you share more details? Source?

You can find the proposed bill here [0]. It doesn't name Facebook and Google specifically, but says that is up to the Minister to designate "digital platform services" that it applies to. Part of which is:

> In making the determination, the Minister must consider whether there is a significant bargaining power imbalance between Australian news businesses and the group comprised of the corporation and all of its related bodies corporate.

Which just so happens to be one of the key findings of a report in 2018 [1] by the ACCC, which may have kicked off Parliament's slow gravitation towards this terrible idea of a law:

> The ACCC is further considering a recommendation for a specific code of practice for digital platforms’ data collection to better inform consumers and improve their bargaining power.

In that report, only Facebook and Google are named, and in the presentation of this law as a good thing, ministers have only named Facebook and Google.

[0] https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display....

[1] https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-releases-prelimin...

According to this the Australian High Court bills of attainder are unconstitutional. Meaning not within the powers granted to the federal government, as those are judicial powers instead.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder

(Note that I’m not saying this proposed law is unconstitutional or a bill of attainder. Haven’t examined it.)

I don't know why you keep bringing up this "bill of attainder" nonsense.

A bill of attainder is "a legislative act that singles out an individual or group for punishment without a trial." Legislation that singles out an individual or group for other purposes is not a bill of attainder.

This bill singles out Facebook and Google, but it does not subject them to criminal punishment. It is therefore, by definition under common law tradition (and also under U.S. law), not a bill of attainder.

The code is not a bill of attainder. Note that there are existing codes for other industries that operate along the same lines as the proposed code . e.g. The Telecom Industry Ombudsman operates via a code. The (non-government!) TIO has the government granted right to impose costs onto those companies that are deemed 'telecoms operators'.

Honestly it probably just boils down to: Rupert Murdoch hates Google and Facebook.

> That should tell you a lot about the people that lobbied/wrote it.

It doesn't really. Care to elaborate?

It means they aren’t thinking from first principles about how linking should work and instead have passed a bill of attainder targeting a specific organization.

That is not what a bill of attainder is.

Oops, thanks. My mistake. The first part stands, it shows they aren’t thinking from first principles. But you’re right it has nothing to do with being a bill of attainder.

How does this new law work? If Google doesn't want to pay media for content, couldn't they just not have newspaper links in their search results? Why would they have to pull out of all the other things that people search for?

Excellent question, particularly because the aricle merely states:

> that would force tech giants like Google and Facebook to pay media companies for their content.

What's they're omitting: the rule forces Google and Facebook to include big media sites.

Always be wary of the media reporting on the media.

Because the law would explicitly forbid them to provide services if they do not agree to forced negotiations.

Pretty much "Our way or the highway" and seems like Google my by preferring the highway.

They're forced to include newspaper links and to disclose their algorithm.

The whole thing is a boondoggle for Rupert Murdoch, even our government funded media is excluded.

It doesn't work. That is why we have this conflict.

"“Are you confident that alternate search engines are going to be able to fill a massive void left by Google and Australians won’t be left worse off?”"

this is what a planted question looks like :-)

This is going to be a tough one. On one hand I absolutely hate how google is trying to strongarm this deal through their various properties. On the other hand, google pulling out of Australia will definitely impact a lot of businesses badly.

Its more of a case of Australia trying to strong-arm Google and Facebook to protect their News Corp interests (but I imagine that this is all a matter of perspective).

Google and Facebook are so powerful that it makes sense to err on the side of anything that could decrease their reach.

If the australian law applied to the web broadly, hacker news would have to pay for all the links.

In reality, being linked to on the web is extremely valuable. Google has had to ban the practices of sites paying to be linked to.

The Australian law completely gets the value chain backwards, forcing tech companies to pay for a specific subset of links, and not allowing them to decline to link either.

Someone in the US govt should write a bill that forces Fox News to pay Google/Facebook/Twitter for the cost of spreading misinformation on their platforms. Should equalize things quite a bit.

What I don't understand from here is that even if MS were to take over, wouldn't they be restricted under the same law?

ie. if its not favorable for MS, maybe they just want to ditch the country too?

Interesting explainer I saw by an Australian economics YouTuber (opposed to the new law):

https://youtu.be/zj2r948rUkQ

As an avid reader of dystopian SciFi even I think this is too much.

While this has been playing out a while in Australia and elsewhere, I think anyone who presupposed non-partisanship and openness by large social networks and other conduits of information knows after the Twitter, FB, YT and others’ hamfisted approaches to setting narratives dispelled that notion and gave reason to every government to review the influence these players have on the respective constituencies.

The steady eclipse of traditional media by Big Tech services has led the USA to a situation where a significant minority actually believe that Trump is a sort of superhero saving the world from pedophiles (QAnon) and a larger minority who really think the Democrat party somehow stole the recent presidential election, and that storming the Capitol is a reasonable response. The view from Down Under is that we need to avoid such civic disasters and propping up the traditional media is an essential part of that.

Like most people, I'm astonished at how social media mediated news seems to disable so many people's bullshit detectors, but there's no denying that it is so.

Anyone who wants to persuade Australians that their government should not go ahead with the planned regulation of FB and Google needs to come up with an alternative suggestion that would keep Australia's democracy functional. I can't see anything in the anti-regulation commentary on HN that passes this test.

Finally someone standing against tech giants. I don't think it is unfair to expect companies to follow law of the land irrespective of size. Big tech giants should not expect "US style" operation everywhere. America is not entire world, just one country.

Absolutely! Australia is quite within their rights when asking tech giants to follow local regulations when they aim services at Australian citizens.

That doesn't automatically make this particular law less dumb, though.

If they think law is dumb or unfair or anything, they can negotiate with Australian government. But they should not expect favors just because of they have monopoly in the field. Again, Australian people will decide what good for them.

> If they think law is dumb or unfair or anything, they can negotiate with Australian government

Or they can just cut off service to that marketplace and let the electorate take up the matter with their elected officials...

I'm Australian and I'd rather not be the battleground for this particular brawl. Our Government is incompetent and corrupt beyond measure, and takes its orders from the likes of Newscorp. Google and Facebook are better dealt with in the US.

I'll always remember Turnbull's laws of math come second to the laws of oz comment, heh. The last few of your prime ministers are much like Donald Trump. Science deniers that claim all sorts of nonsense. Crypto crusaders. Now this. How can a party have so many people like him and still win the elections? Aren't you fed up of having your country ran by these people?

Yes I am.

Unfortunately, the myth still abounds that the conservative side of politics are better economic managers (despite all evidence to the contrary), and the progressives are more concerned about appearances than they are about providing an alternative and representing the working class.

Since we vote for a party, and not a personality, we don't get to pick our prime minister, and since the MSM here is mostly Murdoch-controlled (and he can't keep his digits out of our politics, even though he hasn't lived here for decades), the reporting is myopic and mostly one-sided.

The politicians have become brazen with their corruption as well. There are some rays of hope with new media commentators taking them to task, but it's going to take a grass-roots backlash to unhinge the current party (though this is happening more and more).

What's dumb about the law now? Did America not break up Standard Oil when it got too large and it's reach too powerful?

Aussie here. I don't side with Google and I certainly don't like our government. But at least we elected this government. Google is using its position of dominance as a threat and will deplatform their search to us.

To me that sounds more strange than the government wanting a bit of profit sharing from Google to other media outlets.

> What's dumb about the law now?

There's a few threads about this law on HN already and there's no reason to repeat those arguments again and again. Regardless, my point isn't that the law seem poorly written ; it's that Australia is well within it's rights to regulate it's own internal market regardless of what people on the other side of the Globe think about it.

That's a reasonable request, however, companies should not be forced to operate in areas where such laws exist that are incompatible with their business model. Or even force them to continue operating should the laws change. If the conditions don't fit their expected "operation style" anymore, they should be free to cease operations. In the end, I think, this will only hurt news sites and businesses that rely on google's services.

As an American I low key hope they block Google. I don’t want to give up my use but wouldn’t mind some extra competition in the search engine space.

As an Australian engineer, I low key hope the same.

However, I'll be sticking with a VPN and google for technical related searches (Bing/DDG can't compete with Google, unfortunately).

It is actually a matter of Google blocking Australia, not the other way around.

As can be seen throughout its history, reflected in the nature of its seriously heinous press and Australians' love of outright propaganda over truth, Australians have never prioritized the development of a free and open society - so this should come as no surprise.

The only hope is that there are a generation of Australians who still understand why a free press and a free market are essential to open society - and that they will rise to the challenge of building a really viable, open Australian society.

However, given the predilection for shiny things and smashed avocado's, we might have to wait a generation or two, to see these heroes arise. Lets hope these future Australians' don't have to suffer the same fate as the Taiwanese or the Uigyurs in the quest for freedom ...

Australians' lives are too cushy for most of them to care a whit about political news nevermind any attempt at reading between the lines or applying reason and logic to why a politician or party may be leaning in a particular direction.

Tax cuts = political victory

Border protection = political victory

Increased surveillance (wrapped up in "anti terrorism" labels) = political victory

Australia's political situation is going to get a fair bit worse before it gets better.

This Google / Facebook thing is the Government shilling for News Corp, but you just don't hear that angle anywhere near as much as you hear "Google threatens to..."

It's all obvious, given the existing power structures, but it's disappointing that Australian politicians are acting so predictably grubbily.

Google need to be taken to task for tax avoidance, but that's a big, complicated issue that might take long enough that the next Government gets the credit so, you know, let's half-arse something this term and see if that gets us some free love.

> Australians have never prioritized the development of a free and open society

I think they are in a better state compared to the US and most of the world.

Do you have examples of countries that are better are being free and open than Australia?

The key to being free and open is not putting up with corruption, not having too much of an ideological divide, and good investigative journalism that people care about.

See section entitled "Witness K Trial"[0]

[0]:https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Collaery

See also East Timor, and Australia's secret CIA-run torture camps.

EDIT: downvote all you want, but Australia's totalitarian bent is very clear in these incidents.

That's pretty interesting, thank you.

Thanks - interesting read.

It sure is a but troubling, but I think unfortunately countries are spying on each other all the time. NSA spied on G20/G8 in 2010 that we know of - and nothing really came of it either.

There aren't really any enforceable laws against spying on other countries either. But there are laws regarding leaking intelligence.

It's a very dangerous game dealing with intelligence services of any kind.

In a situation like this, it would have been best to whistleblow anonymously, and also notify the government that is being spied on - then it's up to them to secure their shit.

But to attempt to embarrass a countries intelligence services and seek some kind of penalty against them is really a dead-end game.

The theme is naiveté.

That governments are doing this with impunity, and probably have been since the dawn of "civilization".

That whistleblowing will make any difference to those responsible.

Edward Snowmen cops it (admittedly it seems this viewpoint is decreasing) for "not following official channels". Official Channels is voluntarily putting your future in the toilet.

The purpose of Official Channels is akin to HR Departments: to minimise the damage to the parent entity. More people need to be aware of this for their own good.

>The key to being free and open is not putting up with corruption, not having too much of an ideological divide, and good investigative journalism that people care about.

I do not agree with this position at all.

The people can be easily manipulated into caring about only things the government allows them to care about - as is seen in the case of Australia's recent war crimes, for example, where the warrior culture has effectively suppressed any legitimate discussion of Australia's involvement in committing crimes against humanity with its ADF - who, incidentally, do not answer to the Australian people, but rather their sovereign - and she can do whatever she wants without oversight.

>Ideological divide?

The very definition of a free society is the allowance for, encouragement of, and accomadation for, ideological divides. Who gets to determine 'too much'?

With all due respect the notion that the Queen of the United Kingdom somehow rules over the ADF is nonsense. The Australian constitution places the Governor General in charge of the ADF [https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practi...], who by convention defers their powers to the Minister for Defence.

She's also the Queen of Australia, and in that capacity she can declare secret anything she wants to declare.

The Australian Parliament needs permission from the Governor General to investigate the ADF - it doesn't have that oversight by default.

Yes, the governer general is the "commander in chief", and the governer general is the queen's power proxy, so technically Lizzy is the head of the armed forces, despite polite conventions.

I genuinely do not understand this 'smashed avocado' thing. I get told I love them once every few months, and was recently told I wouldn't get a home loan because of them. I've never had one, yet it seems to be a derisive term that has appeared out of nowhere.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/cultures/millennials#avocado-...

A millionaire got on 60 minutes and decided to dispense some sagely advice to everyone who didn't inherit their wealth and their first business.

EDIT: Though wait, that was in 2017!? I could swear it had been around longer then that...

Wicked, thanks. It is the exact kind of nonsense I had pieced it together to be. A reverse 'okay boomer', if you will, but where you don't get accused of being ageist for saying it.

This is the nation that watched the Great Barrier Reef die right before its eyes, for the sake of avocado fields stretching across the horizon .. The 'smashed avocado' meme reflects Australians' disinterest in managing their unique, valued ecosystem for the sake of such creature comforts.

And really, as an Australian, you should be aware that there are too many examples of this attitude throughout our culture for it to be dismissed as a trivial meme. Its a highly effective one, because it reflects the truth - we'd rather 'have ours' and feel on par with our peers(^WAmerican Cousins) than protect our amazing environment.

Do you have any more information regarding the great barrier reef and avocado fields? I haven't heard about a link there.

I'm also not sure I follow some other parts. 'Smashed avocado' is used derisively for young people squandering income, but those same young people typically have stronger environmental mindedness than older generations. Teenagers were derided by parliamentarians for protesting/striking against inaction on climate change.

I am an informed and (I believe) conscientious Australian, but I do not see why we cannot strive for a happy and comfortable life while keeping a great environment.

Every few months the media here runs some bullshit story about some complete fuckwit that built their millions from nothing, assuming of course your definition of 'nothing' is a million dollar interest free loan from the bank of mum and dad every time you want to have a ping at whatever dumb arse business idea pops into your head, and maybe a couple of $1M+ homes to get their real estate portfolio started for good measure.

IIRC one of said fuckwits started crapping on in the media about how he didn't spend $20 a morning on smashed avos for brekkie, and as you can imagine people got a bit shitty with that and ran with it.

I still need to convince my bank to let me back date a loan to 1980 and buy some land. I'm sure that would be a big help.

"You're only poor because you choose to be poor"

Yeah, that works, thanks. As a previously homeless person, those arguments don't tend to inspire me.

Joe Hockey: Git gud noob[0]

[0]: https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2015-06-09/joe-hockey-accused...

"Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise"

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> When I spoke to Satya the other day, there was a bit of that,” Morrison said while rubbing his hands together and referring to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

I'll bet there is.

Nothing like an incompetent governor willing to give you the keys to the castle if you bend knee and kiss a$$ for a few days first.

There's probably a reasonable case for other players to get a piece of a pie that is pretty much entirely owned by google here, and they'd be stupid not to take it, especially as it positions them to challenge google in more lucrative markets in the future.

To be fair, this sucks for Australians and Australian businesses, and they'll suffer for it; but, it is what it is. You speak with your votes; if you vote a$$ hats into power, don't complain when they do this kind of stuff.

You reap what you sow.

> You speak with your votes; if you vote a$$ hats into power, don't complain when they do this kind of stuff.

I think it’s gone beyond that, the electorate is a captive audience and we’re in a democratic death spiral. Like just today again with Palmer and $75,000 for The Nats or Costello in charge of Nine or the ABC backtracking on Invasion Day - all without me even mentioning Newscorp. There’s no hope of an informed electorate or a healthy media policy. The states need to step in as the only other authority left and tell the government that its already super shaky interpretation of section 51(v) has gone too far, it has usurped power from the real authority, and take it to the High Court if need be.

Like happened in Germany in 1961 with their section 73(7).

Struth. The Libs are fundamentally dependent on the electorate being swayed by the constant anti-labor pro Lib background noise. And it may sway only 3% to the right, but that's enough. 10 minutes of Friendly Jordies, 60% of which is bullshit gags contains more journalism than a full Sunday paper.

Deputy Leader for 13½ years of the party in power, then make him chairman of the second largest media organisation in the country for 5 years now.

Yet somehow the problem isn't with said organisation or party but that Google lists things published by said media organisation without paying? You couldn't weave a dumber more on the nose basketcase if you tried.

Better still. The people that read NewsCorp will bleat that said Deputy Leader is a "Lefty plant" for "Lefty Fairfax" now

The two companies have shifted the overton window so far that they can play off each other to maintain a false narrative of 'balance'

> Like happened in Germany in 1961 with their section 73(7).

Could you elaborate on this analogy please?

It's not an analogy, it's pretty much the same thing:

Basic Law of Germany, Article 73:

> The Federation shall have exclusive power to legislate with respect to [...] 7. postal and telecommunication services

Constitution of Australia, Article 51:

> The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: [...] (v) postal, telegraphic, telephonic, and other like services;

The Federal Republic of Germany wanted to start a TV network to compete with the public regional broadcasters created under the oversight of the allies and tenuously linked to the states. The states sued in 1961 in the Constitutional Court, saying that regulation of broadcasting and the media wasn't granted to the federal government by the constitution (or than technical standards and communications infrastructure where applicable) and they won.

In Australia a similar court case was brought in 1965 by a private person and the judges, at least some presumably born before Australia was even a country, stretching the powers too far and basically assuming that YouTube or Netflix or even video tapes would never exist ruled in what the Federal Law Review called a "failure by the majority judges to justify their decisions on a basis of logic or experience" http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/FedLawRw/1965/5.ht... Which leads me to think that if this were re-litigated in today's age by the states it may well yield a different outcome.

Also note how the wording in the Australian constitution is actually a bit more restrictive on top of all of that.

If they block google for real, it may be a good opportunity for something like https://voteflux.org/ to take off. Because many unhappy people trying to tell the government why exactly they are unhappy is a perfect situation to promote direct/liquid democracy.

Why will it suck? Google would be pulling Search not their other products. Google Search isn’t that much better, and sometimes worse, than competitors.

As someone who has had their default search engine set to DuckDuckGo for the past couple of years, I'm afraid I have to disagree (DDG is mostly Bing). Google search results are objectively much better to the extent that if it weren't for the !g trick to redirect a DDG search to Google I wouldn't use it at all. Sometimes I even find myself adding !g to a search before even seeing the DDG results at all because I have already developed an intuition that they will suck.

For better or worse, Google started with search and is still by far the best at it. Its competitors are sometimes acceptable in comparison, sometimes not. I can't think of any searches where they're actually better except in cases where I just don't trust Google to offer trustworthy results due to the political activism of their staff (which is why I now default to DDG despite having worked for Google for a long time).

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