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Comment by Arnt | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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