Google on Friday threatened to make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government goes ahead with its plans to get tech giants to pay for news content.
The government’s proposed code of conduct aims to make Google and Facebook pay Australian media companies fairly to use news content that is extracted from news sites.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison responded quickly by saying “we are not responding to threats”.
“Australia sets its rules for things that can be done in Australia,” Morrison added in statements to reporters in Brisbane. “This is done in our Parliament. Our government does it. That’s how things work here in Australia.”
Morrison spoke after Mel Silva, managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand, said during a virtual appearance before the Senate about the bill that the new rules would be unworkable.
“If this version of the code became law, we would have no choice but to stop making Google searches available in Australia,” Silva told senators. “And that would be a bad thing not only for us, but also for the Australian people, the diversity of media and the small businesses that use our products every day.”
Silva said Google was willing to pay a wide and diverse group of news editors for the value they added, but not under the proposed rules, which included payments for links and snippets.
He said the code’s “biased arbitrage model” also posed unmanageable financial and operational risks for Google. The executive suggested a number of adjustments to the bill. “We believe there is a viable path to follow,” Silva said.
As in many other countries, Google dominates Internet searches in Australia. Silva told senators that about 95% of searches in the country are conducted through Google.