Google is threatening to pull its search engine from an entire country — Australia — if a proposed law goes into effect that would force Google to pay news publishers for their content.
The company, which has been lobbying against Australia’s plan for months, claims the country is trying to make it pay to show links and snippets to news stories in Google Search, not just for news articles featured in places like Google News, saying it “would set an untenable precedent for our business, and the digital economy” and that it’s “not compatible with how search engines work.”
Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), which drafted the law, seemed to suggest in August that this shouldn’t affect Google’s search business: “Google will not be required to charge Australians for the use of its free services such as Google Search and YouTube, unless it chooses to do so.” Clearly, Google disagrees.
As Google explains in Silva’s full statement and an accompanying blog post, it would rather pay publishers specifically for its Google News products. (It already announced a program to pay publishers in Australia, Germany and Brazil back in June.)
Australia didn’t seem to think that’s enough, though. The ACCC believes the proposed law addresses “a significant bargaining power imbalance between Australian news media businesses and Google and Facebook.”
