Google Threatens To Remove Search in Australia as Spat Escalates (bloomberg.com) 135
Google has threatened to disable its search engine in Australia if it's forced to pay local publishers for news, a dramatic escalation of a months-long standoff with the government. From a report: The proposed law, intended to compensate publishers for the value their stories generate for the company, is "unworkable," Mel Silva, managing director for Australia and New Zealand, told a parliamentary hearing Friday. She specifically opposed the requirement that Google pay media companies for displaying snippets of articles in search results.
The threat is Google's most potent yet as the digital giant tries to stem a flow of regulatory action worldwide. At least 94% of online searches in Australia go through the Alphabet unit, according to the local competition regulator. "We don't respond to threats," Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Friday. "Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia. That's done in our parliament. It's done by our government. And that's how things work here in Australia."
The threat is Google's most potent yet as the digital giant tries to stem a flow of regulatory action worldwide. At least 94% of online searches in Australia go through the Alphabet unit, according to the local competition regulator. "We don't respond to threats," Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Friday. "Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia. That's done in our parliament. It's done by our government. And that's how things work here in Australia."
And nothing of value is lost (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And nothing of value is lost (Score:5, Insightful)
More? Sure. More that are willing to pay people for the privilege of linking to their content? Probably not.
Re:And nothing of value is lost (Score:5, Interesting)
Did I not just read that Google itself has caved in and is paying publishers in France [slashdot.org]for the same thing? So how come they're fighting it so hard in Australia, what make the deal there so much worse?
Re:And nothing of value is lost (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not too familiar with that deal and I cannot quickly find reliable details, but I think that's mostly about Google News, where Google effectively republishes snippets, not just in response to searches, but as a potential alternative for the original source. It sounds like a relatively normal deal; even though it is explained as "Google pays publishers to send them traffic" it's probably more like "Google pays publishers to reuse (snippets from) their content".
In general, I think that _if_ such things are monetized, it should (and will eventually) work both ways: Google should pay content providers for using their content (in other places than search), but those content providers should pay Google for sending them traffic. Economic reality will prevail anyway.
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As I understand it, Murdoch & Co want ALL hyperlinks paid for, not just snippets.
Snippets I can understand - Google makes money off the advertising displayed, and some percentage of people won't go any further than the snippet, thus depriving the source of their advertising revenue. Also, I think Google has already agreed to pay for snippets. Google is however currently engaging in some experiments in de-listing or burying certain search returns - some folk noted recently that the ABC website wasn't tur
Re: And nothing of value is lost (Score:2)
Because other than Australia, France would have hit them with a monopolism lawsuit if they refused.
That is classic Content Mafia logic for you: You are stealing from me, by not letting me steal from you!!!11oneeleven
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So how come they're fighting it so hard in Australia, what make the deal there so much worse?
The Austalian law would require Google to share information about it's ranking algorithms with the news sites. This is a line in the sand which Google will not cross. Money is money, but secrets are secret.
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It was. For example the original bill contained a provision the digital platform (eg, Facebook) must allow the news business to edit edit/delete comments posted in response to their content, and other equally demented crap. But all that sort of insanity has gone now.
Now, I am puzzled by Google's response.
The problem they are trying to solve is Google is a monopoly in Australia (government claims 95% market share). The news businesses are a disorganised rabb
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In other news, Bing announced a record-breaking new 20M new unique visitors today...
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More? Sure. More that are willing to pay people for the privilege of linking to their content? Probably not.
You know? I think Googe is a big part of what is wrong with the internet. Them withdrawing from a country is more a positive than a negative, and might restore a little bit of the promise from the 90's.
I'm sure DuckDuckGo will be (Score:3)
much more reasonable about paying the fees out of its deep pockets.
New Search Engine (Score:2)
I was going to joke about "Darn it is already taken!" but low and behold:
platypusplaytpusgo.com is available
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Re: New Search Engine (Score:2)
pangolinpangolingo.com!
Disney would love it!
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I think Australians are going to find out that there are more search engines.
Yeah, seems a bit dumb to just pack up and go home, when they could just purge all the media companies' domains from results unless the company agrees to not ask for money.
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Seems that would make a bit of sense... Alter the search engine to disable the display of results for any page from which money would be requested.
Google could also introduce a Tag for publishers to include in their web pages or in a Robots.txt file to be used to declare Assent to a "Google Search pages Agreement" - Then start dropping for-profit news medias' domains from display in the countries considering such laws until such time as those pages publish the Signature notice providing the license.
Re:And nothing of value is lost (Score:5, Informative)
I think Australians are going to find out that there are more search engines.
This is not just about Google, or just about money. You can read a good analysis here [stratechery.com]. A couple of highlights:
Google, and Facebook (and other search/social media) would be required to give Australian media companies insider information on their search/promotion algorithms, including giving them 28 days notice of upcoming algorithm changes.
Australian media companies would be able to control how social media users post or comment on their news stories including:
Basically this legislation is the result of lobbying by a small number of media barons, notably Rupert Murdoch [wikipedia.org], and plays to their agenda.
I don't understand this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't understand this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. I doubt they will remove their search engine but what they might do is delist all the news organizations
from their search results or not show previews for news sites or something of the sorts.
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what they might do is delist all the news organizations
The proposed laws will make that illegal, hence Google resorting to a bigger, legal stick. The law makers are fully aware of how things have ended up in other countries and are attempting to avoid that happening in Australia. Things like requiring Google to reveal their ranking algorithm, and to give advance notice of changes, are just begging them to leave the market.
Re:I don't understand this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except when Google shows enough info that the person searching doesn't need to click on the link. That's what this has been about from the start.
Surely Slashdot users can understand how users might not read the article, or even the full summary at times.
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Re: I don't understand this... (Score:2)
Fair use says Google can copy snippets from larger articles without paying. It's providing a transformative service and adding "customer" value. This is a point of contention between some Berne Convention signatories. The U.S. says fair use is ok. Presumably Australia says it's not. A WTO panel says either interpretation is ok.
If Aussie news orgs don't want American Google to engage in fair use copying of their works, they need to hide those works from American Google. They can't demand American Google keep
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Fine, I'll bite.
There are snippets, and then there are snippets. The contention is that Google is taking the latter: too large a snippet such that Google-users don't need to visit the original content owner's site.
Now, you referenced the Berne Convention. Have you seen this?
The Berne Convention does not expressly reference doctrines such as fair use or fair dealing, leading some critics of fair use to argue that fair use violates the Berne Convention. However, the United States and other fair use nations argue that flexible standards such as fair use include the factors of the three-step test, and are therefore compliant. The WTO Panel has ruled that the standards are not incompatible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention#Copyright_exceptions_and_limitations [wikipedia.org]
So the convention doesn't specifically refer to Fair Use. And it certainly doesn't go into specifics ... presumably they are left to each signatory to de
Newspaper articles are no more than the headline (Score:2)
One or two facts, bloated out with pyramid writing to fill as many column inches are required. Any analysis is very rare.
So when Google repeats the headline and the first sentence, that is, essentially, the entire article most of the time.
Of course, the newspapers can hit back by banning Google with Robots.txt.
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Fair use says Google can copy snippets from larger articles without paying. It's providing a transformative service and adding "customer" value.
I'm not a lawyer but from my understanding Fair Use is not nearly as cut and dry as people often think.
In the USA there are four primary factors [wikipedia.org] that are used to determine whether or not use of work considered Fair Use:
1. Purpose and character of the use
2. Nature of the copyrighted work
3. Amount and substantiality
4. Effect upon work's value
"Transformative" is not actually a factor but if you can show that your use of the content was sufficiently transformative that it serves a different purpose than the ori
Re:I don't understand this... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a web developer, but isn't there a mechanism like robots.txt that Google respects? If they don't want the content indexed, that would be correct way to solve their problem.
That's a bit like saying that if you don't like people going into your store and taking things without paying then you should just lock all the doors on your shop and keep them locked. The issue here isn't people going in and out of your shop and taking stuff with them, the issue is whether you are adequately compensated for the stuff that is being taken. Google scrapes these sites for content that these sites spent money compiling. Google then presents it to Google users a very large percentage of whom don't bother going to the source website because Google ripped so much of the source site's content that there is no point going there. That's a situation where Google is parasitising news sites and pocketing all the money the news site would otherwise have gotten. None of these sites is in the business of spending money compiling news and then feeding it to Google for no recompense.
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Re:I don't understand this... (Score:5, Informative)
Compare these two hypothetical situations to show up in Google:
Google Threatens To Remove Search in Australia as Spat Escalates [slashdot.org]
VS
Google Threatens To Remove Search in Australia as Spat Escalates [slashdot.org]
The proposed law, intended to compensate publishers for the value their stories generate for the company, is "unworkable," Mel Silva, managing director for Australia and New Zealand, told a parliamentary hearing Friday. She specifically opposed the requirement that Google pay media companies for displaying snippets of articles in search results.
The threat is Google's most potent yet as the digital giant tries to stem a flow of regulatory action worldwide. At least 94% of online searches in Australia go through the Alphabet unit, according to the local competition regulator. "We don't respond to threats," Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Friday. "Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia. That's done in our parliament. It's done by our government. And that's how things work here in Australia."
In the first one, you'd click the link, and visit Slashdot to get more information. In the second, it's less likely because the content is right there.
Re: I don't understand this... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This++
Sorry, no mod points, your post deserves all of them.
Re:I don't understand this... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a bit like saying that if you don't like people going into your store and taking things without paying then you should just lock all the doors on your shop and keep them locked. ..
Actually... It's more like ban known-shoplifters from your store. Concerned publishers can in fact create a robots.txt entry that tells Google they are not welcome without blocking other search engines.. They don't have to "Lock the doors"; robots.txt can in-fact be used just to Tell the one bad actor that they're banned....
I believe the fact of the matter, however, is that they don't want to -- They benefit greatly from Google sending them traffic, so it is doubtful they want to block Google. Instead, their objection is they don't get enough clickthroughs - they want to make Google send them more traffic by providing Less-Helpful search results listings so people aren't able to navigate the search results and have to actually click and access their article to see what it is about.
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Here's an example from another site and it looks like it would do what you suggest (assuming the crawler honors it):
# robots.txt for Slash site
# $Id$
# "Any empty [Disallow] value, indicates that all URLs can be retrieved.
# At least one Disallow field needs to be present in a record."
User-Agent: * /messages.pl /metamod.pl /search.pl /users.pl /pubkey.pl /zoo.pl /~
Crawl-delay: 30
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow:
Disallow: messages.pl
Disallow: metamod.pl
Disallow: search.pl
Disallow: users.pl
Disallow: pubkey.pl
Disallow: zoo.pl
Disallow: ~
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Indeed, when I see: "15 ways you are ruining your health" or "Witcher cast might be completely replaced" then I already enough...
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In the past, news organizations could invest in producing well-researched/well-written articles. When they published such articles, it would take 1 to 3 weeks before other news organizations published competing articles. This delay created a perceived value, which is how they made money (subscriptions, advertisers, etc)
Then the internet happened. The internet allowed anyone to share information with a large audience instantly. This is a good thing (progress). Unfortuna
Re:I don't understand this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you put content on the internet, and NOT want the dominent search engine to index it? Google is driving visitors to these sites, at no cost to these publishers.
The issue here is with the fact that (a) there is a search engine that monopolises the search market in the first place and (b) that that monopolist has no business abusing it's monopoly position and (c) Google has no business threatening national governments. Let Google go home to California and sulk like a three year old toddler. Australians will just start using Google's competitors, other countries who have similar issues with the Google monopoly will just learn from this and Google's competition in the search market will be strengthened which is a good thing. Google can go sulk and keep sulking for all I care. In the end the one getting hurt here is Google and they are getting hurt by their own arrogance and stupidity.
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They've already agreed to pay for snippets.
Murdoch & Co want them to pay for a simple hyperlinked URL, as well as access to Google's algorithms and early access to changes to those algorithms.
The govt is demanding access to commercial IP.
Re:I don't understand this... (Score:5, Interesting)
> Google is driving visitors to these sites, at no cost to these publishers.
They are also removing clicks from existing users who no longer visit the site, and getting paid by running ads against them.
Do you remember when YouTube was filled with songs with static backgrounds uploaded by users? This was clearly breaking copyright, but Google turned a blind eye because they ran ads against it and made money. The problem, for Google, was that the music industry has a network of international licensing groups that are well funded and have lawyers on speed dial. When they started calling, imagine that, Google suddenly has a change of heart and agreed to pay the labels a fraction of the ad income.
The problem for the newspapers is that they don't have the same sort of international cross-licensing arms that the music industry does. There is one, but "all politics is local", so there's simply not the same scale in news that there is in music. But that is the only difference. Google is running ads against other people's content and refusing to pay for it. They are perfectly aware they are in the wrong, and when anyone brings this up they do the "hey, nice web site you have there... shame if it disappeared off the 'net" schtick.
This won't last. Google *will* pay. Every other news aggregator does, they're just delaying as long as they can to pump their bottom line.
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It's not that they don't want it indexed. The problem here is they realize that Google is making money off it, and they smell money and want a cut of it. They're forgetting that Google doesn't just collect free money. They have to work to index it, and that both the hardware and people behind the search cost money. They're not interested in paying the bills, they just want a cut of the money they think is free, since it's being earned within their borders.
Google knows all too well that if they have to p
Re:I don't understand this... (Score:5, Interesting)
They're forgetting that Google doesn't just collect free money. They have to work to index it, and that both the hardware and people behind the search cost money.
So does the hardware of the news sites that have to respond to Google's search engine whether or not someone actually clicks on the link to them. You'll notice at the end of every search result there's a drop down arrow where you can access a cached version of that page the result links to. So Googles search engine is going and downloading that page multiple times a day or maybe even an hour on popular sites to refresh it's own cache of that page, effectively making a copy of that webpage that it doesn't have permission to copy.
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Users rarely just get their information from the preview that Google displays. Most users click on the link to visit the site that Google is linking to. This is basically free advertising for the site. So while Goole is benefiting from the site having created the story, the site is benefiting a lot more from Google by bringing traffic to them.
The existance of services that offer the ability to raise your site's search engine rankings are proof that sites believe the advertisement that the search engines
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I think if sites are paying for improved ranking, that is strong evidence that the sites are benefiting more from the arrangement than Google is.
Yes... Conceptually at least - Google could require news companies to Pay them in order to get snippets display in search results, and Lower the search rank for keywords of all the websites where Google aren't allowed to show snippets free of cost - promoting news sites that Do above sites that don't.
Then, very likely all the media companies would wind up
Re:I don't understand this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Most users click on the link to visit the site that Google is linking to.
So it's like slashdot where everyone reads the articles.
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> Users rarely just get their information from the preview that Google displays
Do you remember about five or ten years ago when people were putting up scraped versions of Wikipedia? They did so because PageRank boosted sites with lots of content, especially recent, interlinked articles. Wikipedia articles have lots of contents and tonnes of delicious inlinks. So they put up a bunch of Wiki content and their rank went up.
There was no value to anyone else, the articles were generally mangled and the origin
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> It's not that they don't want it indexed.
Sure.
> The problem here is they realize that Google is making money off it, and they smell money and want a cut of it.
Yes, that is correct, they want to be paid for their work.
> They're forgetting that Google doesn't just collect free money
Almost free. I don't think that webcrawler that scraped the content costs as much to operate as a reporter. But I'm happy to entertain cogent arguments otherwise.
In any event, the issue in law here is clear. Google is ta
response (Score:2)
Bing Firefox VPN France Opera Duck Duck Go.
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Then you haven't taken enough cocaine. (Score:2)
All Content Mafia "logic" must always bee looked at unter the mindset of extreme overconfidence, insane paranoia, and of course an ego so big, it your shoulders touch on the back and your chest explodes.
Aka what cocaine does to a sociopathic narcisist.
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the answer is so simple a 6 year old would understand it:
"They have money! Help me get it away from them!"
Funny (Score:2)
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I may be the one who misunderstood but in France Google will not pay for searches but for news aggregation. BTW France is not the only country that speaks French.
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I may be the one who misunderstood but in France Google will not pay for searches but for news aggregation. BTW France is not the only country that speaks French.
Oh, sure, however, the remainder of the Francophonia is tiny. It is incapable of sustaining a competitive newsfeed so Google will play ball there. Compared to that, it can just take its ball and leave in any English or Spanish speaking country.
Scotty's Predecessor (Score:2)
Remember that Malcolm Turnbull also said:
” The laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that,” he said on Friday. “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.”
Similarly I think Scott Morisson is going down the same track, saying that URL HTTP Refs will need to obey Australian Law.
I don't think Scotty knows how the Internet works.
Re: Scotty's Predecessor (Score:2)
> I don't think Scotty knows how the Internet works ... or maths.
Re: Scotty's Predecessor (Score:2)
I prefer Tucker's law:
** If some cunt can fuck something up, **
** that cunt will pick the worst possible time **
** to fuckin' fuck up. **
** Because that cunt's a cunt! **
I've got that embroided on a tea towel at home! :D
_ _ _ _ :)
Yes, you should re-watch The Thick Of It and In The Loop!
A great opportunity for competition (Score:3, Interesting)
No, it doesn't! (Score:2)
It will remove Google News, just like in the half dozen cases in countries where other morons than Scott 'Big Banana' Morrison were trying the same stunt.
They all failed.
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Yes, the Australian newspapers will disappear from the normal search as well, just like in all the previous cases.
Why going back and forth? (Score:5, Insightful)
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While correct, if they want rights holders to get an acceptable payment level, instead of Google withdrawing and guaranteeing it's zero (or needing to pay less than they would have agreed), gov needs to negotiate. Remember, a gov set rate leaves rights holders unable to negotiate after the event. That already happened in at least one market and didn't work out well for anyone.
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Re: Why going back and forth? (Score:2)
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Kind of a non-story then. Australian Government says they're going to do something that Google doesn't believe is fair - so Google say they'll pack up and leave if it passes.
However, for some reason, Google is in the wrong if they do exactly that? (according to some)
Australia is small fries in the grand scheme of things for a global company.
and on the (almost) other side of the globe.... (Score:2)
Google agrees to pay French publishers for news.
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/0... [cnn.com]
Re:and on the (almost) other side of the globe.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm beginning to like Google's solution to the French Problem.
Shove French new search over into its own corner. Remove French news content from general search results. So users will have to explicitly go looking for it. And news outlets will only get paid when users do so. Why pay for links that nobody wanted to see anyway?
Same could work for Australia. Google doesn't de-list the sites. They just don't display them by default.
Re:and on the (almost) other side of the globe.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe the Australian govt is forbidding Google to do that in their proposed legislation. Ie if they show news results, they must still show the local news sources and compensate them.
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You might want to review what happened in France[1] and Spain[2]. If the rule is "thou shalt not use this content without paying $other-party$", then removing that content seems like a reasonable solution.
[1] https://www.engadget.com/2019-... [engadget.com]
[2] https://www.engadget.com/2014-... [engadget.com]
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The EU is too likely to take severe action against any disproportionate or discriminatory actions against any member. The existence of state specific legislation allowed Google to safely react at state level but they still have to be careful not to overreact and trigger an EU response.
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Absolutely, if projected profit projected costs, they will gone in a second.
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Go Google Go (Score:1)
Take your toys back to Silicon Valley and be done with it.
Your incessant appetite for every bit of data on each and every one of us will fast become the cause of your downfall.
someone sent this to me the other day.
> CALLER:
> Is this Gordon's Pizza?
> GOOGLE:
> No sir, it's Google Pizza.
> CALLER:
> I must have dialed a wrong number. Sorry.
> GOOGLE:
> No sir, Google bought Gordon's Pizza last month.
> CALLER:
> OK. I would like to order a pizza.
> GOOGLE:
> Do you want your usual
So Australia goes through with this scheme. (Score:5, Interesting)
Google geofences out the entire continent, and then Canberra can find out the hard way if any other search sites want to pay to link to news content.
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"The content you searched for is 'here'. "
How hard is that? Oh right Google wants visitors to stay on google websites so they can see more ads.
Re: So Australia goes through with this scheme. (Score:3)
You don't understand the problem. The problem isn't Google linking to news sites, it's them scraping the news sites' content, and showing "summaries" of the content which are complete enough that they remove any reason for people to go to the original source. All while Google runs their own ads on the "summaries". If Google were only linking to sites there woul
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Let them - I'll just fire up the VPN for all internet traffic, make it the default instead of selected destinations *cough*netflix*cough*
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VPN?
Late Capitalism in action (Score:2)
It is actually a non-issue (Score:1)
If Google isn't allowed to show partially direct link information, none can.
You will find out Google probably isn't the only one
If it is about Google being so fucking dominant, you can address this another way, like, talk to each other in a decent way.
I think this unintelligable standoff "we do what we want" for BOTH parties only brings loss
Mostly confusion to the end user, that is, your ci
Do it! (Score:5, Funny)
Don't just make stupid threats! Let the whole world shake and tremble as it beholds the power of the Google. Go for world domination, motherfuckers!
Oh noes! (Score:2)
Both the propaganda media being invisible, and Google being gone?
Sounds almost too good to be true! :)
Display Australian results ... (Score:2)
I remember (Score:2)
I remember a bunch of years ago, another country demanded the same thing when different news organizations complained. I think it was France. Google finally dropped their news links from that country. I had to laugh when the same news organizations started complaining they were not getting any hits to speak of after google dropped them.
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The Australian proposed laws make just delisting the news illegal. They know what’s happened elsewhere and are trying a more comprehensive approach. That’s why Google is threatening to pull their search service entirely.
Its not just about money... (Score:2)
Its not just about the money that the government wants Google to pay to media companies.
The government also wants to force Google (and Facebook and other big platforms) to share deep proprietary trade secrets of how their algorithms work with media companies (especially the Murdoch empire) so that those media companies can gain an unfair advantage in gaming said algorithms and get more exposure.
Why should Australian commercial media companies (especially scumbags like Murdoch) get an advantage that no-one e
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I agree with your second para, that bit of the legislation is unreasonable. Your third para is bizarre. Australia is a country with its own laws. Yes they may be different to all other countries. Suck it up.
as an australian.... (Score:2)
Commercial entities (Score:2)
Decisions made by the Australian Governemnt....pfft. With incentive from the Australian media industry of course. Wonder how big their "donations" were.
I guess Google could de-index all known major Australian news outlets with the option of opting in, as a non-nuclear option - with a clause "if you see something of yours listed or want yours listed, contact us to action."
Are they going to pull the same crap with Bing, DuckDuckGo, etc? You know, because they also do previews of news stories....or are they
Re: uh... so what? (Score:2)
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Re: uh... so what? (Score:2)
No, that is a common (and deliberately caused) misconception.
The *distributor* holds a copyright on it.
That may be you,
but the whole and only point of the media industry is that it is not.
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In the United States, the author owns the copyright, unless it was a work made for hire, or there is a formal transfer of ownership in writing.
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Absolutely. They can work out a private deal that both parties agree to. That's what businesses do.