Hacker News Reader

Honestly, I'm with Google on that one.

I'm disappointed they caved in and paid the danegeld, but the way Microsoft went "We fully support the extraction from the danegeld, and if Google happens to lose any market share due to its refusal to pay it, we would be more than happy to have these customers use Bing instead. We fully support this law that has no effect on us and actively harms our main competitor" is just disgusting.

View on HN

They would be fine with it as long as they aren't subject to it. If they were subject to it, it would make it very difficult to operate Bing. Unless they just aren't doing algorithm changes very often, it would present a significant burden to be required to report out such changes weeks before deployment. Of course the forced "arbitration" for "fair" payment to news organizations would also be onerous for them. But fortunately for MS the law is highly selective in which companies it targets.

Strangely, Microsoft is supporting a similar law in the USA where they would be affected by it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com