Google has threatened to remove its search engine from Australia, a country with more than 20 million Internet users, if the government enforces a law that would force technology platforms to pay news publishers to show news in the results of the fence.
“If this version of the [media] The code would become law, it would give us no choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia, “Melanie Silva, Google’s vice president for Australia and New Zealand, told the Sydney Morning Herald on Friday. reported.
The statement was followed shortly after Facebook, which appeared with Google in the Senate hearing, he asked in the country for a grace period of six months to let him do business directly with the media before he was subject to the code.
Google and Facebook have been negotiating the code with the Australian government since December 2019. The country has long wanted to be the first to force the two technology platforms, which absorb most of the world’s digital advertising revenue, to pay to display content from news publishers which have been directly affected as a result. The measure could have effects worldwide, including the United States.
Hours before Silva’s statements, Google agreed pay for news posts in France to display content. But in Australia, the company argued that requiring platforms to pay for links would break a fundamental principle of the Internet: the possibility that sites could link freely to each other.
“Just as you don’t pay to include a hyperlink in an email, websites and search engines don’t pay to provide links to third-party websites,” Google wrote in blog post. “It would be like requiring the phone book to pay companies to be able to include them. It just doesn’t make sense.”
In response to Silva’s statements, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison refused to back down. “We don’t respond to threats,” he said they told reporters in Brisbane. “Australia sets our rules on the things you can do in Australia. This is done in our Parliament. Our government does. And that’s how things work here in Australia. “
