Google threatens to pull search engine in Australia

Google doesnt just return search results, it prioritizes some over others, which isn't meaningully different from advertizing. I wonder if this plays any part in the legislation... afaik, duckduckgo does not prioritize (other than 'closest match'), and perhaps thereby may not be charged?

 

I have vowed to not use the former presidents name anymore. No need to see that POS name.

 

Oddly enough it seems Google has struck a deal with France to pay news publishers for content online. I guess Australia may have a way to play this idea that will work.

 

The legislation will establish a code, a framework to allow media to get income from platforms that reproduce their content. As something like 95% of searches in Australia use google then there is no reason to bother negitiating with duckduckgo etc. Either the code will already cover them or it will be able t obe extended to do so if they get big enough.

 

IIRC duckduckgo is simply google searches done though a proxy server to assure privacy.

 

Cool.

 

Australia Slams Google and Facebook: It's "Inevitable" You'll Soon Pay For Hosting Australian News

Canberra moves to set major precedent in peeling back Google's immense "control and power"...

Sometimes Auzzies remind me of Texans.

Google is still refusing to obey proposed legislation aimed at better compensating and rewarding local news publishers, while bringing greater transparency to the way algorithms employed by Google, Facebook, and YouTube work.

Canberra is now finalizing the bill which will require Google to obtained licenses for all content published by Australian news companies. Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. has grabbed at least 94% of all search traffic in many countries and is using its monopoly power to bully content providers and smaller competitors.

Australia's Federal Treasurer and deputy leader of the Liberal Party Josh Frydenberg said on Sunday that it's "inevitable" that the Silicon Valley tech giants will pay to use and present Australian content on their platforms and in search engines.

The Social Media giants told the Auzzie Government to either prostrate themselves or they would leave.

In a display of raw power intended to intimidate the Auzzie government, Google has been experimenting with hiding some Australian news sites from search results, in a move media outlets said was a show of "extraordinary power".

If the media doesn't sing the pro Google/Facebook/Youtube tune they will bury you in their search results.

 

It uses Bing from Microsoft under the hood, not Google's search engine, the rest is correct.

As for Google paying msm, for what exactly? Displaying snippets of the said news article?
Its not displaying the actual news, unlike Facebook.

The search results are listed in order of the levels of payment towards google.

So a better solution is to exclude news providers from paying Google to be displayed on top of the result list. Make it illegal to advertise news. Maybe then MSM can focus on news and not on click baits

And.. I see little difference if any between content and news content, so categorizing content and which content is okay for ads is another issue..

 

Not every country's copyright laws are the same. My understanding is that some countries are clamping down on online sites like google that uses its crawlers to pull copyrighted materials from sites in countries where that is increasingly a no no without permission be it text or photos as part of their for-profit enterprise. I personally think this is just the opening salvo in the war regarding privacy by first going after the crawlers that suck in information. By forcing google and eventually other sites to fine tune what information gets vacuumed up to avoid having to pay other people, they are forcing them to limit what these crawlers gather and where. In the mean time, it forces them to pay sites and reporters the same way they pay Jake Paul to be a youtube idiot.

 

Nice comment, made me think of different angles to the problem.

Technically, you can prohibit crawlers from indexing your copyrighted content but that is equivalent to economic suicide.

Maybe there should be better international laws for dealing with CP(or getting rid of it) content. China had proposed something similar last year, link

Google is not in the wrong, the legislation is lacking so Google is setting the name of the game. If legislation is available, Google has to adhere to the rules, this is not a technology issue as the internet is capable.

Robots.txt
Disallow *.aus

 

I am not saying who is in the right or wrong. It is just my gut instinct as what the long play is going to be. My dad said the great thing about google as opposed to other search engines when it came along was that their ranking returns then the brief snippets kept people from having to wade through pages of garbage links to get to something relevant to why they or most people were searching for a topic. Basically higher quality search returns.

As for the more immediate issue, I think print newspapers and magazines are functionally extinct and a great many online news journals and magazines are probably not far behind. It is one of the reasons I elected not to major in journalism though I really wanted to.

I don't really agree with the US intellectual property laws so I would open to amending them. I would shorten them, not let them run nearly as long as they do, especially on printed works.

 

Google Backs Down In Australia - Opens Paid Platform For (Some) Australian News

Amid standoff with lawmakers, Google offers its own 'alternative'...

Last month Australia Prime Minister Scott Morrison hit back in the wake of the threatened Google shut down in the country, saying, "We don’t respond to threats." He added at the time: "Let me be clear. Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia."

It's commonly estimated that Alphabet Inc. oversees at least 94% of all search traffic in Australia, similar to many other countries globally, at a time it's coming under increased accusations of using its monopoly power to bully content providers and smaller competitors.

 

Yeah, they already control 94% of your search traffic, which means all your service folks are paying them per click, to get their name at the top of the searches say, "plumber near me" or "clogged sink" or A/C won't work. Then they decide to "tweak" their algorithm, and suddenly a company drops to the third page on search results. You think anyone picks anyone off the third page to call for service? They are out of business.

And when they ask Google why they suddenly dropped to pg 3 it's like pulling a straight answer from a bramble patch. Don't turn your economy over to them. Your government is right in their demands.

 

This may help you to understand......

if one or more of the vaccines can legally be enforced...... revenue could be in the range of ONE TRILLION!


It can be challenging to maintain objectivity when a trillion dollars in revenue is at stake!!!!

The actual reason they are giving for this action could be an excuse... and the real reason could be one that they cannot admit to publicly. I have to plead guilty though.... I am biased... and I've seen some pretty interesting news pieces come out of Australia over these last several months........... so this may have given me the wrong impression altogether????


Ivermectin treatment caused 'amazing improvement': Melbourne COVID patients

 

Paying for news on the internet as we now have to do from most news sources is destroying it and now they want to make the search engines pay for their news meaning consumers will be passed along the charges. The insatiable greed is destroying the internet, pretty soon it will only be for the wealthy.

 

Facebook apparently doesn't think it's "inevitable":

Changes to Sharing and Viewing News on Facebook in Australia - About Facebook (fb.com)

LOL

 

The Aussies are at a crossroads, will they continue as a Free People or will they be ruled by Google? So far, it appears the have chosen freedom, which indicates that Google didn't buy off enough politicians before they got in this fight.

 

I'd be delighted if Australia and Google walked away from each other too, but I'd politely suggest to you that the Australian government itself is a far greater threat to the freedom of the Australian people than Google is.

 

It's not just Google, Facebook jumps in:

"THEY’RE ACTUALLY DOING THE AUSSIES A FAVOR":

 

I'm sorry to hear that. Hopefully the People of Australia have the tools they need to regain their rightful control of their government, but, I see no way they can possibly control Facebook and Google if their government gives into them.

 

Sure, they can't control Google or Facebook as mere consumers of their products / services, but the People of Australia have the option of uninstalling Facebook and shutting down Chrome. Neither of those companies force anyone to install / use their products. It's a choice individual Australians have made. They could destroy Google's and Facebook's supposed power over them tonight, just by shutting them off. They don't have that option with the infringements of their rights at the hands of their government.

 

If you sell services and advertise on facebook and/or Google, you will get no calls if your website doesn't pop up either in the first, second or third placement on a laptop in either first or second placement on a smartphone when someone does a search for say: "clogged toilet" or "a/c doesn't work".

My understanding is that Google and Facebook are refusing to disclose their algorithms to the government. Another thing, these search terms are bid on, so, you don't know from one day to the next, or one minute to the next, what your advertising costs are going to be to keep your business busy with calls.

They exercise tremendous, and unaccountable power over what an online society sees. I'd like any government to take them on and pry open this black box they currently wield.

 

What freedom? They want to charge Google for finding hits to local news links, and Google says such law it practically impossible to obey for technical reasons. Also if someone posts a link to an Australian newspaper in Facebook, then FB would be billed for it.

 

duckduckgo prioritizes, just most viewed, not some crazy algorithm to decide what I may want, I also use duckduckgo for my default search engine for most things

if you or I do a search for a term and click on a link, that link gets a boost as it was most likely a valid response - that is what I expect from a search engine

now at some point, someone may find that it's the most used search engine and try to hack the search results, then they may have to change, but for now it is nice

and of course I like that they do not track my searches and use for targeted ads

 

This is my point: the only reason Google or Facebook continue to have this "tremendous, and unaccountable power over what an online society sees" is that the members of that online society willingly give it to them. It could be yanked back by the people, be they Australians or Canadians or Americans, by simply ceasing to use Google's services. If Australians made the habit of consulting a different search engine, for example duckduckgo, to find a local plumber or HVAC technician, then Google's "power" would vanish. Google only has power because Australians continue to patronize their services. The power is really in the hands of the Australian people, they're just using it poorly, and you and I don't like that.