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| Google threatens to remove the search engine from Australia |
Google has threatened that if a law goes into effect, the search giant will be required by law to pay news publishers for news content and then run its search engine nationwide (Australia).
Google Australia and New Zealand Vice President Mel Silva (Mel Silva) told the Australian Senate Economic Legislative Committee: If the proposed law goes into effect, we will have no choice but to stop Google searches in Australia.
According to a report by the Sydney Morning Herald, she added: "We do not see an opportunity to continue providing services in Australia, but there are financial and operational risks."
The company has been pushing Australia's plan for months, saying the country is trying to feature fees and story snippets in searches rather than reports from places like Google News.
Google said: This incident set an insurmountable precedent for our business and the digital economy and conflicts with the way search engines work.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison quickly responded, saying: We are not responding to threats. Australia sets the rules for what you can do here. This is specified in our Parliament as it is defined in our government. Done, that's how it works here in Australia.
Google has also received approval from some well-known allies. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, said the law could violate basic Internet principles by requiring payment to link specific content on the Internet.
Another Internet founder (Vint Cerf) who helped draft the TCP / IP protocol shared similar ideas with the committee.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which drafted the bill, appears to have suggested in August that it should not affect Google's search activity.
She said: If Google doesn't choose this, Google won't have to charge Australians for using free services like search engines and YouTube.
As Google previously said, it prefers to pay publishers specifically for Google News content, and in June it announced a plan to pay publishers in Australia, Germany and Brazil.
Australia seems to think that this is not enough. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) explained that the bill created a major imbalance in bargaining power between Australian news companies, Google and Facebook.