Facebook and Google ‘are not free; everything has a cost’: ACCC’s Rod Sims on new draft code, inquiries, and Google court cases

Rod Sims, the boss of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), has addressed the watchdog’s court cases against Google, its ongoing inquiries into the digital platforms and ad tech supply chain, and the newly-released draft code that could see Google and Facebook pay for news.

While these platforms are “supposedly free”, Sims argued that consumers pay to use the services with their personal data: “They are not free; everything has a cost.”

The new code will see news companies enter into negotiations with Facebook and Google in an attempt to get them to pay for content. Sims admitted that the benefit the platforms get by featuring news is “extremely challenging for the government to quantify”, making a bargaining process necessary.