Imagine a world without Google, the ubiquitous search engine that is the starting point for more than five billion queries a day. This is the reality facing Australia, where the tech giant threatens to disconnect its homepage in a clash with the government.
Google opposes a planned law that would force the company and Facebook Inc. to pay Australian publishers for the content of the news. The Internet ultimatum for local lawmakers (change legislation, or else) has left a digital void over a nation that basically only knows one way to surf the net. Google does 95% of Internet searches in Australia.
The possible consequences of the dispute go far beyond Australia for Google, owned by Alphabet Inc., the domain of global advertising has made it a target for watchdogs around the world. If the company backs down in Australia, the news pay law runs the risk of becoming a template for jurisdictions, including Canada and the European Union, that are following the dispute and are willing to shorten Google’s lead.
But disabling what is possibly the world’s most famous website would give all of Australia to rivals, including Microsoft Corp.’s Bing and DuckDuckGo, who have been unable to evict Google as a gateway to the web. These competitors in search engines would suddenly have a playground for development and a starting point to advance on the world stage.
Software engineering student Patrick Smith exemplifies Google’s Australian reliance. The 24-year-old from Canberra said he sometimes accumulates 400 searches a day from Google to help him with his studies, catch up on news and search for recipes. Smith said his previous day’s browser shows 150 searches, in just five hours.
“The possibility of Google search disappearing is terrifying at best,” Smith said. “It’s very thoughtful for me at Google something, anything, that I’m not even slightly sure about.”
The search for “Sydney’s best beach” shows the variation in performance among Google’s competitors. The first result of DuckDuckGo was an ad for a hotel located more than 1,000 miles away in Queensland. Search Encrypt, which promotes its data protection capability, said, “There don’t seem to be any fantastic matches.” Bing suggested the Bondi Beach post office. Only Google returned a real beach, Bondi, first.
Google’s search for “Sydney’s best beach” returns to Bondi Beach, Australia’s largest city [File: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg]First world legislation
The Australian parliament will consider the first world legislation from the week beginning on February 15 after a key Senate committee recommended the passage of the bill on Friday.
“The government expects all parties to continue to work constructively to reach trade agreements,” Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said in a statement welcoming the Senate report.
The government says the local media industry, including those at News Corp. by Rupert Murdoch and Nine Entertainment Co., publisher of the Sydney Morning Herald, has been bleeding from advertising revenue by tech giants and should be paid fairly for content.
Google argues that it directs traffic to its websites and that being forced to pay to display snippets of news breaks the principle of an open Internet. He also opposes the arbitration model of the final offer of the law which determines how much he should pay publishers.
Facebook has said it can prevent Australians from sharing news on its platform if the law is enacted, an unprecedented step.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc., which controls Google [File: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Bloomberg]
All of Australia’s economic output is below Alphabet’s $ 1.4 trillion market value, so it may come as a surprise that the far and small market is so important all of a sudden. But Internet titans are so eager to keep Australia from setting a global precedent that Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg burst into their newspapers in recent weeks to have telephone connections with Prime Minister Scott Morrison or his ministers.
Cheating on an opportunity, Microsoft President Brad Smith and CEO Satya Nadella also arrived.
Taking the free hit, Smith told Morrison that Microsoft would invest to “ensure that Bing is comparable to our competitors.” This week, Smith wrote Thursday in a blog post that the U.S. should adopt its own version of Australian law.
DuckDuckGo, a search engine that claims it doesn’t track its users, is also trying to charge money.
“There is a growing global demand for online privacy and Australians don’t have to wait for government action” to stop using Google, DuckDuckGo said in an email. Search Encrypt says its results expire after 30 minutes of inactivity.
Non-profit alternatives have also been suggested. The Australian Greens party this month asked the government to consider creating a publicly owned search engine instead of letting Microsoft in. “We shouldn’t look for another foreign giant to fill the void,” Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said.
Google Free China
Of course, Australia would not be the first free Google nation in the world. In China, where the site is blocked, Baidu Inc. is the leading search engine.
But Australia would stand out as a Westernized democracy with no access to the site and Google’s exit could push the nation back years in terms of quick access to information.
With two decades of data in store and processing approximately 5.5 billion searches a day, Google considers itself unmatched in tailoring results to people and their idiosyncrasies.
“Bing will not be able to compete with Google in terms of off-block quality,” said Daniel Angus, an associate professor of digital communication based in Brisbane at Queensland University of Technology. “Australians may need to re-learn how to use search.”
Google again got the best results in the search, “Australian leader,” which shows Morrison and his Liberal party at the top of the page, coming from an official government site. Bing gave similar details, although it removed them from Wikipedia. DuckDuckGo offered ads for team leader jobs in Western Australia. Search Encrypt redrawed a blank space.
Softening posture
There are signs that Google’s tough position may be softening. Morrison said his meeting with the company was “constructive” and “should give them great encouragement to get involved in the process.” Google declined to comment on the meeting, though it said in a statement that it proposes to compensate publishers through its News Showcase product, under which the company pays selective means to display selected content.
Some older Australians who have lived in a world before Google have fewer worries. Gino Porro, owner of the Li’l Darlin bar and restaurant in Darlinghurst, 58, uses Google and has not heard of any other search engine. But it sees a return of word-of-mouth recommendations instead of online reviews if Google closes its homepage. “Customer service is important, not Google,” he said.
But back in Canberra, Googling student Smith is worried about the possible closure and the good performance of a replacement.
“Honestly, I think my life is going to get a lot harder,” he said.