Days ago, Google threatened to pull out of Australia if the government pushed ahead with their new law governing the company’s relationship with news publishers. The Australian government is planning to introduce a new law over a long-time row over whether the tech giants should pay for news posts that appear on their platform.
Under the proposed law, the government would mandate that Google has agreements with all the news organizations. But the tech giant has maintained that it is “unworkable.” Mel Silva, the regional director of the company, stated that “If this version of the code were to become law, it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia.” In response, the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison stated that the government does not respond to the threats.
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In the Australian market, Google has more than 90 to 95 percent of the market share. But the nation also has other search engines, including Bing and Yahoo. In contrast, the data suggest that Google ranks as the top search engine across the country, and Yahoo lies at the eleventh position and Bing at thirty-third. Even though Bing and other search engines work perfectly fine most of the time, many users say that when it comes to previous articles or data, these are not as effective as Google.
Additionally, the company also powers numerous other services, including Gmail, YouTube, and Google maps. And it still remains clear that whether Google’s threat would affect other services as well. Although there are other alternatives, Australian consumers see this as essential. The same thing happened with Chinese mobile giant Huawei, when Google boycotted the company over the tensions with Washington, it found it difficult to sell its tech products.
Previously, Google pulled out of China in 2010 over accusations of hacking. On the other hand, similar rows are happening in European nations. A controversial European copyright bill mandates search engines to pay news publishers for the links on their platforms. French news publishers agreed on a deal with the world’s top search engine this week on how it should work.
