Google to pay $60M for misleading representations | Hacker News Reader

Google to pay $60M for misleading representations

accc.gov.au

183 pointslysp109 comments

Good.

Still wait for Google to be punished for abusing it market position to push its browser in a much worse manner than Microsoft pushed IE back in the days.

For those who are new to this game: Microsoft was basically punished for bundling a browser with their operating system.

If that was punishable (and thankfully it was), what should we say about the worlds largest advertising company pushing their browser in ad spots so valuable that no others were ever allowed to touch them (the otherwise clean front page of Google)?

And of course: with its current behavior, MS should of course be punished again for its abusive use of a dominant position when it tries to stop people from downloading other browsers and tries to prevent people from setting other browsers as default.

Microsoft now is doing the same with Edge. If you want to change your default browser on Windows 11 you need to individually click and select it for every file extension/protocol.

I tried to mention it above, so yes, I absolutely agree.

I just tried this, there's a "make XYZ your default browser" button at the very top of the page, which changes the default for most of the relevant file extensions. Some, like MHT, it doesn't. Not sure why. But they have everything on one page, so for the extensions it missed, you can easily change.

That seems about as simple as one could make it. Is your concern that it didn't change every extension to whichever browser you made the default?

I always find it boggling that apple can require all browsers use webkit on ios... it seems so similar to some of the MS stuff you mention.

For now it is actually a good thing.

But it should probably be looked into the moment the Chrome monopoly is dealt with.

Why is Apple's arrangement a good thing and Google's a bad thing?

This is the tricky bit about monopoly breaking... The lack of consistent legal philosophy on what constitutes "monopoly" can be a real problem for fair competition (which translates to more costs and worse product for everyone, as companies shadow-box law hypotheticals rather than just make good product).

Note that I write "for now".

Apple's arrangement is only a good thing in the context of Google's otherwise total domination of the browser market.

Nobody is saying that Apple's behavior is overall good, just pointing out that Apple's bad behavior just so happens to be keeping someone else's bad behavior in check.

I don't find effectively forcing Safari on users to be a good thing. Even if it takes some market share away from Chrome, it just makes a new platform specific monopoly, and arguably a worse one with less pressure to change.

As a web developer iOS is the most infuriating platform at the moment for me. There are some random nonstandard features. Just this last month I had an issue with ios "low power mode" causing webkit to throttle all browser animation frame requests by half, with no way to override or even check if it is on. There are open complaints and issues about this going back years but nobody can change it without Apple's blessing, which they don't give, so it affects every browser on iOS with no recourse.

I have had tons of iphone browser specific issues and I am pretty sure their platform monopoly is a big part of why they go ages without being addressed. If there was real competition on the ios browser market they might push each other to do better by comparison.

> I don't find effectively forcing Safari on users to be a good thing. Even if it takes some market share away from Chrome, it just makes a new platform specific monopoly, and arguably a worse one with less pressure to change.

Safari has no pressure to change because it literally can't, Apple WebKit is the ONLY rendering engine on iOS.

But for Apple's love of avoiding standards, you won't usually find people who care or who are concerned about it until it actually gets in your way (your issue for example), for the most part nobody cares about USB-C not being universal for iPhones as I'm the 14-24 demographic in the US and everyone sees USB-C as the "Android" charger or even funnier the "vape" charger, and they see Lightning port as the only phone charger ever made (I genuinely had to remind my sister that 40-pin is a thing), and for example that's all I can talk on because none of the other things have genuinely got in my way (mainly because my only Apple products are over 10 years old).

It's a net positive in that it is the only thing stopping Google from having complete dominance of the web. Both are problems that need to be solved

You solve that problem by making a better browser, not by limiting user choice.

Firefox has, more or less, consistently been a better browser than Chrome, but because Google has a monopoly on the internet Chrome gets the majority of the market share. A better product cannot defeat a monopoly.

Firefox is not better than Chrome.

Tell me what plugin I use to get tree style tabs on Chrome?

Tell me when did Google stop sending my every single keystroke to Googleplex?

And when did it stop eating all my RAM?

Google is closer to Firefox than before, but mostly because of Mozilla :-/

Why should you as a web developer be able to bypass settings that keep the client’s phone from running out of battery life?

Maybe because nothing ever happened with the “MS Stuff”.

Apple will keep their prices high enough to never be bound by anti-monopoly law. "Give something away" with advertising and you've got the problem that you want to collect whatever you can from each and every consumer.

Microsoft was never “punished” in the US for bundling IE. They were given a slap on the wrist for forcing OEMs to pay for Windows licenses even when they shipped PCs without Windows.

Do you notice that at no time before or after the DOJ case there was never a time that MS stopped bundling IE with Windows?

“This significant penalty [...]" is it really a significant penalty when Google has deep coffers?

It is when pretty much every country without a tech economy does this to the big players every few months

If the "tech economy" is going to hoover up consumers from all over the world, it should expect to contribute it's fair share of the costs of maintaining civilisation in those societies.

Maybe if they didn't restructure their organizations so as to avoid taxes in all but the lowest tax jurisdictions, they wouldn't be fined by places where they actually make the money.

> If the "tech economy" is going to hoover up consumers from all over the world, it should expect to contribute it's fair share of the costs of maintaining civilisation in those societies.

How is this not different from how a mafia operates?

Who is being compared to the mafia? Outsized, international conglomerates, accountable only to shareholders or governments representing the public?

Really? If they were accountable only to shareholders would you even have the post here where they have to pay fines?

Governments represent public. Sure. But they are slaves to other corporations

https://reason.com/2021/02/18/everybodys-wrong-about-the-fac...

The problem appears to be that the fines are a wrist slap, so cost of doing business once entrenched.

Regulatory capture is also a problem. I prefer governments with less corruption, debilitating fines, companies less powerful than nation states, and robust antitrust enforcement to maintain healthy competition.

>Maybe if they didn't restructure their organizations so as to avoid taxes in all but the lowest tax jurisdictions, they wouldn't be fined by places where they actually make the money.

So to be clear, these fines aren't legitimate but instead are backdoor taxes meant to compensate for the government's inability to capture the taxes they've established? Is that your position here? And you're insinuating this is a good thing?

It’s more like an import tariff in disguise. Countries other than the US, China, and Sweden have been under-successful in tech so they tax the exporters who supply their markets with these fines.

The good thing would be for the companies to report profits where they make them but apparently we can't rely on their good nature to do that.

I don't have a problem with governments resorting to tactics like this in order to get market participants to pay their fair share. But then, I'm not a billionaire and never will be so it aint ever gonna affect me.

“Deserve ain’t got nothing to do with it.”

Both tech companies and governments are doing what they are doing because they can.

Could be the issue that big players do illegal things? If some organization brings this issues in front of a judge what should a judge do? He must apply the law. I assume Google had competent lawyer present so this is legal, if you are a US tech company and don't like this laws (that protect consumers)then I suggest don't sell your products/services in this countries or follow the laws.

No, but it might send a message to other digital platforms like the quote says. Google won't even notice this, everyone smaller will now worry about receiving their own $60M fine which would ruin them.

I don't understand what's so hard on doing fines based on % revenue or something similar, that would solve such issues.

The size of the fine likely is somewhat revenue based, that's why they used Google to scare others.

>The size of the fine likely is somewhat revenue based

What? Says who? It's just a number that the ACCC and Google both agreed upon. FTA: The ACCC and Google jointly submitted to the Court that a penalty of $60 million against Google LLC was appropriate, and that no separate penalty against Google Australia Pty Ltd was necessary, in circumstances where the Australian company was not responsible for the preparation of the screens which the Court found were misleading.

>It's just a number that the ACCC and Google both agreed upon.

Both groups agreed on it being fully aware of Google's revenue, and if Google had the revenue of an average company it's likely neither side would have suggested the amount. Somewhat revenue based.

>Both groups agreed on it being fully aware of Google's revenue, and if Google had the revenue of an average company it's likely neither side would have suggested the amount. Somewhat revenue based.

It says absolutely nothing of the sort in the article. Seems like yet another assumption you are making.

By the same logic, both groups are fully aware that Google starts with the letter G, therefore the size of the fine is based on the fact that Google starts with the letter G.

I'm really not trying to be an asshole here, but please don't go around saying things that you don't know to be true.

>It says absolutely nothing of the sort in the article. Seems like yet another assumption you are making.

Google's revenue is public knowledge, surely the ACCC is capable of using a search engine to find it.

>but please don't go around saying things that you don't know to be true.

I can't prove it, or perhaps I could if the ACCC has fined others for the same offense, but even without proof I'm not making an extraordinary claim. If a local delivery place had two separate toggles needed to stop them from tracking your order history, they'd be guilty of the same thing yet people would find a $60M fine ridiculous.

IIRC the EU does that, but there is a limit that isn't sky high. So it's more likely to deter smaller FAANG competitors than actual FAANG companies.

The maximum GDPR fine is the higher of €20 million or 4% of global turnover, which is pretty substantial. In Google's case the maximum fine based on 2021 revenue would be ~€10 billion, about 13% of their profits in that year. It's not completely crippling but it's a significant hit, especially considering that they can get fined again and again for additional violations.

The fines are a much bigger deal for companies with lower profit margins - Amazon had ~€470 billion in revenue in 2021, and only ~€8 billion in profits. The maximum fine Amazon could receive is ~€18.8 billion - more than two years of profits. A single severe violation potentially putting them in the red for 2 years is a pretty strong penalty.

[Thank you Euro-Dollar parity for making these computations effortless]

>everyone smaller

Like who? Since 2019, Android and iOS control <99.7% of the market in Australia.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/245191/market-share-of-m...

I assume this data collection law does not onlu apply to phone operating systems, but any such service that collects data and could hide disabling it in multiple places.

Could even take it one step further and say that Google is flaunting bad behavior to put regulator eyes on it on purpose. Since Google controls the market anyway it would actually help to discourage competitors.

Noam Chomsky would probably agree as he says large companies love regulation because it locks out competitors.

Noam or no Noam this is pretty well known. Enterprise Risk and Compliance departments for major banks and financial institutions are a a revolving door of lobbyists, regulators, and executives, and they all participate in the draft process of the legislation.

It's about time Big Tech caught up to what the rest of what large corporations in America do. Gotta start paying off those politicians and drafting regulation to lock out all those pesky startups.

if you open those coffers you may be surprised at how many mindless worms are eating away their precious content.

i've always wondered where the money is going in those kinds of trials.

It's supposed to be a compensation for damages to the consumers, but are the consumers ever getting any money from the fine ?

From my quick reading, it's a penalty, so it's not necessarily supposed to be a compensation, but a deterrent. So I guess the answer is that the money goes to "everyone", which is fine in my book (otherwise you have all the overhead of registering who gets what, which leads to a large chunk going to law firms).

Correct, the fines are those set in legislation and collected by the government. I suppose in the US you might say Google was found guilty of a "corporate misdemeanor"? I think the ACCC overlaps with some functions of the FTC; they are the investigator and prosecutor in such cases.

(It's worth noting that while Australia does have class actions for collecting compensation, here civil cases can never collect punitive damages so it's probably hard to extract a large sum from Google through that route in this particular case).

$60M seems a lot to normal people, but what if Google earned say $61M with that practice, therefore they were aware it would turn as a gain for them? I mean, the penalty should be of course proportional to the offense, but prosecutors should also calculate in some way the benefits so the penalty works as a serious deterrent in the future. Also, part of the fee should be compensation for the users involved, even if that would be a few bucks, as it's important they're made aware that they were lied to and how, so they can develop more resistance to false advertising or mistreatment of their personal data in the future.

Indeed. And even if they only earned $6.1M doing this, if they did something similar ten times but were only caught once then it's still worth it.

Instead of more rules and bigger penalties on the books, what if the ad company and the phone company were separated? Then other phone companies could work with the ad company, while other ad companies could work with the phone company.

Consumers would have more choice. I don’t believe one big entity selling phones and ads carefully regulated by government officials will lead to desirable outcomes in the long term.

The Australian government lacks the authority to do that without putting a level of onerous restraint on trade on a foreign company that could get them in trouble with the WTO.

The United States government could, hypothetically, pass laws that recognize Google's gestalt of overlapping businesses as a new kind of monopoly and break it up. If you're American, there are some candidates interested in this and they aren't too hard to find.

In this particular case it’s estimated that 1.3m people viewed the screen. A fine of ~$60 / user seems pretty hefty and a good deterrent.

$60M, provided they have 60M users, that means a penalty of $1 per user. And I bet they have more users than that, so that is why companies keep on doing this, because it is damn cheap.

Australia has a population of 25 million, so it's very unlikely that they have 60 million users.

The product in question is Android, 15 million is probably a reasonable guesstimate and nicely divides to $4 per user. Still not a ton, but not quite as low as you're suggesting.

FTA: The ACCC’s best estimate, based on available data, is that the users of 1.3 million Google accounts in Australia may have viewed a screen found by the Court to have breached the Australian Consumer Law.

Hmm so roughly 27 USD per user over the 2 year period in question, or US$13.50 per annum per user.

Roughly how much revenue (and profit) does Google make per Android user per year through targetted ads, etc (over and above e.g. an iPhone user)?

Google makes less profit from an Android user than an iPhone user. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/mar/29/google-ea...

Lol the truth hurts!

This occurred in Australia, Australia uses Australian Dollars. Thus they are not being fined USD, they are being fined AUD. USD does not have anything to do with this discussion whatsoever.

60M / 1.3M = au$46.15 = us$32.85

Splitting hairs but by the time I noticed you'd done a currency conversion (which had made me think your number was way off) I figured might as well be accurate.

Edit: while being pedantic, I'll also point out that halving for a "per annum" amount doesn't really make sense considering the estimate of 1.3M users is ones who "may have viewed a screen found by the Court to have breached the Australian Consumer Law" during the two years, not who were exposed to two years worth of anything.

Facebook was making $50 per user before apple crippled them, so I would assume Google makes at least that much

Oops, read over that, thanks :)

Doubtful they have 60 million users in Australia for a lot of reasons. Also $60,000,000 isn't damn cheap.

Or because these are two different apps and users don't actually find this confusing. The same thing happens on iOS. You can toggle location usage for Google search and location history in Google Maps.

> so that is why companies keep on doing this

Google already stopped this, so which companies are you referring to?

This fine is only for Australia, and Google has had to pay billions in fines globally, which is not cheap and has changed their data collection practices. The suggestion that fines aren’t working isn’t accurate.

Just give them some time, this happens every 3 years.

Does it? Mind passing along some links to demonstrate the pattern?

It feels like government agencies and companies have found a spot where the fines aren't too much for companies to stop but enough for government to be financed. It's not about deterrence but about mutually beneficial arrangement.

This "[...] sends a strong message to [other] digital platforms [...]" that it is not possible to compete with any FAANG at these shady business battlefields. But these so called "penalties" just solidify these monopolies by raising the bar too high for everybody else but them. Virtue signalling at it's best.

$60M is "cost of doing business" for Google when they make something like $200B. Pocket change fines like encourage them to continue to break the law.

Call me back when the fines hit 25% of revenue earned. Then we'll see some changes.

>"“This significant penalty imposed by the Court today sends a strong message to digital platforms and other businesses, large and small, that they must not mislead consumers about how their data is being collected and used,” ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said"

This is a company that made $257 billion last year.[1] How is that penalty significant exactly? It's practically a rounding error. How does Gina Cass-Gottlieb make that statement with a straight face? I almost think these folks are more interested in putting a check in the win category in order to feather their resume than they are in trying to meaningfully deter these companies from these practices.

[1] https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2021Q4_alphabet_earnings...

Australia has had a thing against Google.

In Australia, News Corp (Rubert Murdoch) dominates the media landscape.[0] They have the power to dictate who wins elections and who loses. Thus, politicians bend to News Corp will.

One of the results of this dynamic is that politicians forced Google to start paying News Corp to show news links in Google News in Australia but not anywhere else in the world.[1]

[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-14/fact-file-rupert-murd...

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/feb/17/news-corp-agre...

> have the power to dictate who wins elections

I hope you're kidding. That power has belonged exclusively to Facebook, Google, et. al. for at least the past 8 years.

Do you know anything about News Corp and Rupert Murdoch?

Sure, Dennis Potter named his tumor 'Rupert' - there's a damning indictment going back to Murdoch on Fleet Street.

I see a lot of complaints about this but find little information about what the actual problem is.

The abc link referenced mentions that Murdoch's reach through physical newspapers is indeed outsized, but acknowledges that only ~11% of the population uses this as primary news source. There is nothing indicating anything resembling a monopoly in radio, TV, and most importantly digital.

"The Australian" belongs to News Corp, but is generally considered a respectable outlet. Opinion pieces are clearly distinguishable, and they also welcome contributions by left wing politicians (Tanya Plibersek and Jim Chalmers are examples I remember seeing relatively recently).

> "The Australian" belongs to News Corp, but is generally considered a respectable outlet.

The Australian? Respectable? Nah, I don't think so.

They're right wing, obvious about it, and have had several outright false reports in the last few years. [0] They even run their own "Australian of the Year" award, with the same name as the actual award. Their editors call themselves right wing and conservative, and they've been accused by both the Greens and Labor of targeted harassment because of it.

[0] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-australian/

It is a conservative leaning news outlet. You may not agree with the view point but that does not imply that it is not respectable.

I think you took the wrong word for emphasis. The false reports, and bias that leads them to write hit pieces against any group of another leaning, is what decreases their respectability. Any media group that leans too far one way or the other, loses respectability, because they stop reporting news, and start reporting fantasy.

Unlike those left wing outlets that are nothing but beacons of honesty and decency, right?

Or is it ok to have nuance on the left but not the right?

Mediabiasfactcheck. Lol. Of course there are stringent guidelines as to what is specifically right wing, far-right wing, left wing and far-left wing... All this political tribalism is pathetic.

That is not correct for Australia. NewsCorp almost singlehandedly kept the liberal party in power for almost a decade. Their reign only recently is over thanks to Scott Morrison's stupidity and incompetence that was so great even NewsCorp couldn't cover his ass.

Competition is good evidently

First link shows NewsCorp domination (~65%) in Capitol City print mnedia, not so much elsewhere.

Second link is about the News Corp deal, but does mention that ALL Australian media will be compensated for "framing" by Google ("in google" summaries and snapshots of sites that don't generate traffic to actual site).

To be honest, this is a fair ask for kickback to actual content creators .. local journalism, etc.

It's not a fair ask, because Google were also not allowed to simply withdraw from displaying news. The whole thing was a shakedown. Initial drafts didn't include the public broadcaster ABC or SBS and only benefited the commercial entities.

> Initial drafts didn't include the public broadcaster ABC or SBS and only benefited the commercial entities.

What's the current state of play, can the ABC and SBS do deals with Google and Facebook to get a return on their content?

Why yes, yes they can.

Interestingly, you're completely correct.

However, the animosity runs deeper than Americans may imagine.

News Corp Australia has built a ground up, from first principles, Ad Tech platform that competes directly with Google's.

The number of, and proportional penetration, of its publications are such they've the critical mass capable of flouting the Google Ads duopoly.

Fairly strong F500 equivalent engineering culture.

They've recently announced an incredulous financial performance for the legacy media section of their business.

It has to be said Rupert Murdoch funded the whole ad tech build with cable sports money. Murdoch will give up on his Australian newspapers the day hell snows over.

Still, the raw flow of ad dollars is quite remarkable.

Undercutting Google is an (relative to the woes of legacy media) immensely profitable business.

It might be a good thing that Australia actually has a competitor in the field which is otherwise dominated by US tech giants. Though one has to ask why Murdoch gave up Sky and 20th Century.

> Undercutting Google is an (relative to the woes of legacy media) immensely profitable business.

Well, Google is immensely profitable, so this is not very surprising.

What is interesting is that companies undercutting it are the exception, not the norm.

It's certainly true that Murdoch has an outsized influence in Australia, but I don't believe this particular incident is a case of Google versus Murdoch. I think this was a fairly clear case of Google violating Australia's very robust consumer protections. It's something Australia takes very seriously, and it's a big mistake to run afoul of the ACCC.

When it comes to Murdoch related things, I often think it’s likely to be both, since Google can violate the law and the ACCC entirely appropriate to punish them, and it can be profitable for the Murdoch family to tip the scales in order to make life harder for Google in Australia, so when something like this comes up it’s in their best interest to stoke the fire and make sure the public knows Google did something wrong, to encourage them to file the appropriate complaints, etc… and so what might have been a 25 million dollar problem for Google with $arbitrary ongoing compliance costs, becomes 50 million dollar problem with $arbitrary x 1.5 ongoing compliance costs.

Look at the past record of the ACCC. When their media code ultimately just resulted in Google and Facebook paying Murdoch and 9, the commissioner said that was his plan all along.

https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2021/03/17/alan-kohler-news-...

[Rod Sims] said last week: “It doesn’t matter a toss what the money is paid for.”

At an on-the-record Q&A event in Melbourne last week, Mr Sims said: “For reasons of their own, Google and Facebook strongly don’t want to pay for news on search and news feed. Fine. The news media companies don’t care what the money is for. So I just think it’s a perfect outcome.”

“But”, I followed up, “this does nothing to address the dominance of Google and Facebook”.

“This is one problem at a time”, Sims responded.

“The problem we’re addressing with the news media code is simply that we wanted to arrest the decline in money going to journalism. That’s what the code is about – getting more money into journalism, and I personally think the money going into Seven and Nine, what’s been publicly reported, which is north of $30 million, will make a big difference.”

When I pointed out that there is nothing in the code that makes the companies spend the money on journalism, rather than dividends or executive bonuses, he replied that “the world is watching what they do”.

Q: What's the difference between a thug who threatens to break in your windows unless you pay up and Rod Sims?

A: Rod Sims is paid three quarters of a million dollars a year by the taxpayer and has the gall to claim he's acting in the public interest.

We shouldn't assume the ACCC are acting in good faith in this case because we know they haven't historically, instead waging an ideological campaign against tech companies.

> Look at the past record of the ACCC.

What does that have to do with this case?

Are you seriously suggesting one shouldn't take an institution's history into account when looking at a case? Like if the KKK does something, we should completely ignore their history of racism in figuring out what happened? That's absurd.

ACCC hasn't taken any interest in privacy for decades. The first time they showed an interest was the very same digital platforms review in 2018 that also led to them extorting Google and Facebook to hand over cash to Murdoch. We don't even have decent privacy laws, so the ACCC have been quite open about using section 18 of the consumer law as a means to enforce privacy standards against tech companies (said section is a vague prohibition on misleading or deceptive conduct, which can be interpreted as broadly as the ACCC likes which means it can be easily weaponised against whomever).

Australia has very high levels of market concentration and the ACCC is widely derided for failing to ensure competition. This is not a competent regulator. Of course one of the most concentrated industries is the media, which also hates tech companies, so the seeming alliance between the ACCC and traditional media conglomerates is of interest when considering their crusade against big-tech.

Regulatory capture is a well-known phenomenon, and it's especially dangerous when the captured regulators destroy competing industries. A recent example being the FDA's attacks on e-cigarettes because they've long been partially captured by traditional tobacco companies.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2022/05/27/study-raises-questions-...

A month after that was published btw, Matt Holman, chief of the office of science in the FDA's Center for Tobacco Products, left for Philip Morris, a competitor to Juul's owner. This is how things work, it's just harder to find out about when it comes to Australia because, again, we don't have a functioning press, thanks to the ACCC.

> Are you seriously suggesting one shouldn't take an institution's history into account when looking at a case? Like if the KKK does something, we should completely ignore their history of racism in figuring out what happened? That's absurd.

Only if that history has something to do with the case in hand. If KKK lynched a white man, for no racist reasons, why do you think that we should be discussing their racist history instead of the facts of this specific case? Don't you think that it is absurd to claim that the only motivation for KKK doing absolutely anything is racism?

Now, if KKK lynched a white man for marrying a black woman... well that would be a different story.

So, what is your "black woman" for the case that is on discussion here?

This isn't just lynching another black man, it's lynching the same black man. Google was the target in both cases. As such it's obviously pertinent to look at what motivated them go after Google the first time, which as I said is because they've been captured by traditional media interests.

Ah, so you are in fact claiming that KKK can only ever have one motive for doing anything. I find that quite absurd. Notice that with all the words that you have written here not one of them is about the actual case being discussed, wonder why that is.

I'm claiming the KKK only have one motive for lynching black men.

There's no media coverage on this case because we don't have a proper press thanks to the ACCC, but it's a ridiculous case on the face of it. I use location data covertly stolen from users who've installed various apps at work (we don't do anything nefarious with it but there's no reason someone couldn't). The ACCC doesn't care about privacy or consumer protections unless it involves big tech, as anyone familiar with its history can attest.

>Murdoch has an outsized influence in Australia

>Australia's very robust consumer protections. It's something Australia takes very seriously

Quite the irony here

Different systems at play, but I see what you're saying. The ACCC doesn't try to stop social influence.

However, the last federal election was lost by the incumbent government, despite support for it by News Corp. That influence may be far greater over politicians themselves than over the electorate.

Whats more incredible is that inside Australia people genuinely think it's a good thing, because the Government is finally "taxing" Google... they actually believe the money is going to the Australian government (schools, hospitals and all that) and have no idea the money actually goes directly to Murdoch.

Even when I explain it with evidence, they still come back with things like "it's about time Google paid their fair share, they've been skipping taxes for too long".

It's utterly incredible what happens when you're on an island isolated from the world.

(NOTE: I've been out of Australia for ~20 years and only recently came back, so it's kind of a shock to only get media from the inside)

>(NOTE: I've been out of Australia for ~20 years and only recently came back, so it's kind of a shock to only get media from the inside)

Stupidest thing I've ever heard. There is no 'from the inside' in Australia, what media could you possibly have accessed before that you cannot now? Even more, what media external to Australia provides a better or more accurate insight about Australia than the Australian media?

Of course Murdoch's a prick, he always has been, he also does not have total control of the media in any way. To make a statement that implies there is some type of censorship or barrier between Aussies and access to the truth is a complete fabrication.

> Stupidest thing I've ever heard. There is no 'from the inside' in Australia, what media could you possibly have accessed before that you cannot now?

What I have found is that all the media in Australia, reporting about Australia, has a very specific tone and message that it's putting across.

I spent years around the world reading about Australia from outside Australia, and media in the rest of the world wasn't putting that message into the reporting.

If you have not, I suggest you leave for a good long while and see the place from the outside. It looks a lot different.

Feel free to illuminate us on what this 'message' is, preferably also provide some evidence that supports it's all encompassing nature. Until you do so it is simply a vague allusion that exists only to serve your narrative.

I find it unsurprising that any country 'looks a lot different' if you compare internal and external media, the question is accuracy and truthfulness. I ask again, please show me any external news source that is even remotely competitive in these areas with the Australian media.

You double down while answering none of my questions and still have not even explained HOW it 'looks different'.

By definition you are speaking https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/nonsense

> Whats more incredible is that inside Australia people genuinely think it's a good thing, because the Government is finally "taxing" Google... they actually believe the money is going to the Australian government (schools, hospitals and all that) and have no idea the money actually goes directly to Murdoch.

Every media outlet was shouting loudly in favor of it, even the Guardian. Zero integrity when the rubber hit the road.

Whatever Australia has against Google, there’s no question that Google completely lied about location tracking being buried in the “Web and App Activity” setting.

Washington DC, Washington state, Indiana, and Texas are suing Google for the exact same thing.

In this case, Google is guilty as sin.

> Australia has had a thing against Google.

Is there someone that doesn't?

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