Google is threatening to pull out of Australia if the proposed news media bargaining code — which is designed to benefit news organizations — becomes law without significant changes made first.
On Friday (Jan. 22), two Google Australia executives — Managing Director Mel Silva and Government Affairs Head Lucinda Longcroft — appeared virtually at a public hearing before Australia’s Senate Economics Legislation Committee.
The bargaining code intends to address the uneven playing field between Australian news media companies and Big Tech platforms. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) started working on the legislation in August, and it was introduced into the House of Representatives in December. It essentially would mandate that tech behemoths like Facebook and Google pay news organizations to access their content.
Silva told the committee that the code is not acceptable in its current state, and if passed into law it “would hurt not just Google, but small publishers, small businesses and the millions of Australians who use our services every day.”
She added that the search giant sees a “way forward,” and suggested that Google could “pay publishers for value, without breaking Google Search and our business in Australia.”
Silva said that a major problem with the proposed code is the payment requirement for links and snippets in search. This would “set an untenable precedent” not just for Google, but for the digital economy as a whole, and “it’s not compatible with how search engines work, or how the internet works,” she said.
As Silva told the committee, search is only effective because of “unrestricted linking between websites.” If this version of the code becomes law, Silva said Google would have “no real choice” but to pull Google search out of the country.
In a blog post following the hearing, Google wrote that “… we are committed to reaching a workable code and see a clear path to getting there, but serious concerns with the current draft remain. We’ve been clear that we don’t oppose a code, nor are we opposed to supporting journalism — but how we do that matters.”
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