Google’s ‘open letter’ is trying to scare Australians. The company simply doesn’t want to pay for news
Yesterday, Google clapped back against the ACCC and news companies. But senior media lecturer Belinda Barnet isn’t buying it, as she explains in this crossposting from The Conversation.
If you went to use Google yesterday, you may have been met with a pop-up, warning that the tech giant’s functionality was “at risk” from new Australian government regulation.
Google Australia’s managing director, Mel Silva, wrote an open letter in response to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) News Media Bargaining Code, which would require Google (and Facebook) to negotiate “fair payment” for Australian news content published on their services.
The letter, pinned to the Google homepage, claims the code would force Google “to provide you with a dramatically worse Google Search and YouTube”. The ACCC has already labelled several of the letter’s statements as “misinformation”.
It’s still difficult to see why media organisations think Google owes them anything. Linking to content in search results is hardly akin to content theft and Google already provides the ability for website owners to prevent their websites being indexed by the search engine.
It is sad to see Australian copyright law, which is already extremely generous to content owners, move even further away from long held suggestions that there should be a broader fair-use doctrine implemented like exists in the US.
Its a shame Google are being so arrogant. Its time they went back to their original motto of “Don’t be evil”
Media companies get a great ride utilising Google and YouTube. Google was progressive, put its users and customers first and flew. Many Australian media companies did not evolve and did not progressive.
Make no mistake, this is a power struggle and Murdoch wants to control the minds of Australians. Google wants to empower them.
Society is better off with Google.
The problem is the balance of power Google’s monopoly provides. Google doesn’t have a product without content, not just its search product, but the rest of its advertising business is based on the data signals derived by the user’s engagement with content.
In that sense, both parties need each other. However the issue is, one side doesn’t have any leverage in the current status quo for the industry to competitively operate fairly. If a publisher doesn’t play by Google’s rules, then they are pretty much signing their own death warrant. Google is only truely impacted if something collectively is done, which is too much of a risk for a single business or small group of entities to commit to, particularly under current industry conditions.
We could hope for a disruptor to come in and shake things up, however chances of success against a corporation as rich and powerful as Google is near impossible. Therefore ACCC are rightly trying to do their due diligence here.
Would it not be easier for the Government to simply tax Google (and other aggregators who disinter-mediate News sites) directly (and successfully) then redistribute via gov grants to help stabilise the fourth estate?
Why go through all this? It seems overly complex.
What a crock. this is not public protection, it’s picking sides between media oligarchs and surveillance death stars
As for Google’s open letter.. is that all they can muster?
1. new regulation = finally.. now pay your taxes
2. consumer data may be at risk = too little too late to stop this overseas monopoly harvesting data supply chains
3. hurting free services = Google services are not free, it’s all funded by data.
Google does not “use” news, it simply links to it. why should it have to pay for it? it’s like trying to make the yellow pages pay all the companies in it’s directory.. Google is a directory, not a provider.
This whole thing is being pushed by the greedy Murdoch Media, and their pals in the Liberal government
I like having free stuff from Google, but as it diminishes the financial resources of genuine news companies it reduces all news to commentary, conspiracy theories and fluff pieces. I think Google should share some of it’s massive revenue with companies that do real journalism.
Google needs to remember they are not the only game in town either. Bing anyone?
Australian content has never been very good. If you want better news,
just change the region, bottom left of page to Canada or USA or UK.
Then you won’t have to be bothered by the poor local content.
You will never switch back. Australia is a drop in the ocean. Much better content overseas (real reason new media in Australia are crying out)
think taxi’s to uber
Telstra to Skype
Bank to Currency Fair
Hotel to Airbnb
No wonder Local Australia wan’ts them to pay. The lack of competion worked well till the internet came, now we have real products and excellent services from these new players.
Long live GOOGLE
I’m sorry, but publishers milked the free traffic from Google and Facebook for years when it was in their favour, and once the playing field tilted out of their favour, they refused to adapt. Good to see the government really pushing to support innovative businesses (who happily cut local jobs and offshore where they can).
I also find it highly hypocritical that they complain about a duopoly of power given News and Nine’s stranglehold on print and digital media and the operating models they had traditionally run. Without sounding sycophantic Facebook and Google, but they have democratised the ability to advertise in a way that News, Fairfax (RIP) and the TV networks were never willing to.
Google brings more choice and variety than was ever brought to me by Nine, News Ltd Fairfax etc . The ACCC is trying to fight the natural competitive, disruptive dynamics of markets but applying regulation which protects incumbents. In essence that is anti-competitive ! ACCC should focus on protecting the rights of consumers to choice of what and where they get their news rather than championing for large, irrelevant news corporations.
because we’ve never had a media concentration (monopoly/duopoly) problem in australia…