WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) – Google on Friday threatened to make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government went ahead with plans to charge technology giants for news content.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison responded quickly and said “we are not responding to threats”.
“Australia makes our rules for the things you can do in Australia,” Morrison told Brisbane reporters. “It simply came to our notice then. Our government does. And that’s how things work here in Australia. ”
Morrison’s comments came after Mel Silva, the managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand, told a Senate inquiry into the bill that the new rules would be unworkable.
“If this version of the code became law, it would give us no choice but to stop making Google search available in Australia,” Silva told senators. “And that would be a bad outcome not only for us, but also for the Australian people, the media diversity and the small businesses that use our products every day.”
The government’s proposed code of conduct aims to make Google and Facebook fairly pay Australian media companies for the use of siphoned news content from news sites.
Silva said he was willing to pay a wide and diverse group of news editors for the value they added, but not according to the proposed rules, which included payments for links and snippets.
He said the code’s “biased arbitrage model” also posed unmanageable operational and financial risks for Google. She suggested a number of amendments to the bill.
“We believe there is a feasible way forward,” Silva said.
Like many other countries, Google dominates Internet searches in Australia. Silva told senators that 95% of searches in the country are done through Google.
Asked by a senator about the amount he pays, Silva said last year that he paid about A $ 59 million ($ 46 million) in revenue of A $ 4.8 billion ($ 3.7 billion).
Facebook also opposes the rules and has threatened to remove news from its site in Australia. Simon Milner, Facebook’s vice president, said the large volume of bids he should make would be unfeasible.
The Australian Institute, an independent think tank, said lawmakers should stand firm against Google harassment.
“Google’s testimony today is part of a pattern of threatening behavior that terrifies anyone who values our democracy,” said Peter Lewis, director of the institute’s Responsible Technology Center.