Google’s ‘open letter’ is trying to scare Australians. The company simply doesn’t want to pay for news
Yesterday, Google clapped back against the ACCC and news companies. But senior media lecturer Belinda Barnet isn't buying it, as she explains in this crossposting from The Conversation.
If you went to use Google yesterday, you may have been met with a pop-up, warning that the tech giant’s functionality was “at risk” from new Australian government regulation.
Google Australia’s managing director, Mel Silva, wrote an open letter in response to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) News Media Bargaining Code, which would require Google (and Facebook) to negotiate “fair payment” for Australian news content published on their services.
The letter, pinned to the Google homepage, claims the code would force Google “to provide you with a dramatically worse Google Search and YouTube”. The ACCC has already labelled several of the letter’s statements as “misinformation”.
It seems Google isn’t keen to set a global precedent by paying Australian news outlets for their content. Google claims the ACCC’s proposed code is disastrous, for a variety of reasons.
Its letter is part of a campaign designed to scare Australian web users. Don’t fall for it.
Google’s claims don’t stack up
First, Google is objecting to a specific part of the legislation designed to stop it downranking (or refusing to list) news content if Google has to pay for it.
This is precisely how Google responded when similar legislation was introduced in Spain. Google changed its search results and even shut some outlets out completely to avoid paying for news content.
The ACCC is heading that off at the pass. The legislation states if Google intends to change the search ranking of a news organisation, for example by downranking that outlet’s stories in Google’s search results, it must give the organisation 28 days’ notice of this change.
The open letter claims this is unfair and would help news outlets “artificially inflate their ranking over everyone else”.
When asked how this was this case, a Google spokesperson told The Conversation the code would require the company to “give all news media businesses advance notice of algorithm changes and explain how they can minimise the effects”.
They said this provision would “seriously damage” Google’s products and user experience and impact its ability to provide users the most relevant results.
However, this claim doesn’t bear logical scrutiny. Notifying a news company of its impending downranking would not give it an unfair advantage, as no other types of content providers would be targeted for demotion anyway.
It would simply warn the outlet if Google was about to drop them down in search results, or boot them off altogether. The 28 days’ notice requirement is an insurance policy in case Google retaliates by deciding to simply downrank media outlets demanding payment for content. That’s why Google hates it.
It’s tempting to conclude that Google is simply trying to gaslight its users by sowing doubt about the wisdom of the new regulations – because it doesn’t want to pay.
Actively misleading users
Google’s open letter went on to claim Australians might experience data privacy violations if it’s forced to hand advertising data over to “big news businesses”.
Setting aside for a minute the fact that Google is trying to play the “little guy” here, which is laughable, let’s first look at why this is also a falsehood.
The proposed code states Google would have to share data collected about users’ engagement with news content with news media outlets. For example, this would include details about the specific articles a user has clicked on from that outlet, or how long they were reading it for.
This is exactly the kind of data media outlets (including The Conversation) already collect from readers on their own platforms. Yet Google’s letter claims “there’s no way of knowing if any data handed over would be protected, or how it might be used by news media businesses”.
This is pretty rich coming from one of the world’s most data hungry companies, and one of its most prolific privacy violators.
In a further statement to The Conversation, Google’s spokesperson added:
The code requires Google to tell news media businesses what user data we collect, what data we supply to them and ‘how the registered news business corporation can gain access to’ that data which we don’t supply to them … This goes beyond the current level of data sharing between Google and news publishers.
But Google itself has oceans of information about its users’ searches, habits and preferences. In fact, the ACCC is currently pursuing Google over alleged privacy violations in a separate lawsuit.
Google is not the underdog here
Finally, Google’s open letter ends with the veiled threat its free services may be “at risk” if the proposed ACCC code becomes law.
Google’s spokesperson told The Conversation that Google “did not intend to charge users for [its] free services”.
“What we did say is that Search and YouTube, both of which are free services, are at risk in Australia,” they said.
Google is now a trillion-dollar company. Its parent company Alphabet earned US$46 billion in worldwide advertising revenue in the last quarter alone.
Google claiming its free services for Australians are “at risk” if it has to return a tiny fraction to the companies that actually provide news content – well, I’m sceptical of all the claims in the letter, but this one takes the cake.
https://twitter.com/Superchair14/status/1295185365297324033
Belinda Barnet, Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications, Swinburne University of Technology
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
It’s still difficult to see why media organisations think Google owes them anything. Linking to content in search results is hardly akin to content theft and Google already provides the ability for website owners to prevent their websites being indexed by the search engine.
It is sad to see Australian copyright law, which is already extremely generous to content owners, move even further away from long held suggestions that there should be a broader fair-use doctrine implemented like exists in the US.
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Its a shame Google are being so arrogant. Its time they went back to their original motto of “Don’t be evil”
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Media companies get a great ride utilising Google and YouTube. Google was progressive, put its users and customers first and flew. Many Australian media companies did not evolve and did not progressive.
Make no mistake, this is a power struggle and Murdoch wants to control the minds of Australians. Google wants to empower them.
Society is better off with Google.
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The problem is the balance of power Google’s monopoly provides. Google doesn’t have a product without content, not just its search product, but the rest of its advertising business is based on the data signals derived by the user’s engagement with content.
In that sense, both parties need each other. However the issue is, one side doesn’t have any leverage in the current status quo for the industry to competitively operate fairly. If a publisher doesn’t play by Google’s rules, then they are pretty much signing their own death warrant. Google is only truely impacted if something collectively is done, which is too much of a risk for a single business or small group of entities to commit to, particularly under current industry conditions.
We could hope for a disruptor to come in and shake things up, however chances of success against a corporation as rich and powerful as Google is near impossible. Therefore ACCC are rightly trying to do their due diligence here.
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Would it not be easier for the Government to simply tax Google (and other aggregators who disinter-mediate News sites) directly (and successfully) then redistribute via gov grants to help stabilise the fourth estate?
Why go through all this? It seems overly complex.
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What a crock. this is not public protection, it’s picking sides between media oligarchs and surveillance death stars
As for Google’s open letter.. is that all they can muster?
1. new regulation = finally.. now pay your taxes
2. consumer data may be at risk = too little too late to stop this overseas monopoly harvesting data supply chains
3. hurting free services = Google services are not free, it’s all funded by data.
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Google does not “use” news, it simply links to it. why should it have to pay for it? it’s like trying to make the yellow pages pay all the companies in it’s directory.. Google is a directory, not a provider.
This whole thing is being pushed by the greedy Murdoch Media, and their pals in the Liberal government
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I like having free stuff from Google, but as it diminishes the financial resources of genuine news companies it reduces all news to commentary, conspiracy theories and fluff pieces. I think Google should share some of it’s massive revenue with companies that do real journalism.
Google needs to remember they are not the only game in town either. Bing anyone?
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Australian content has never been very good. If you want better news,
just change the region, bottom left of page to Canada or USA or UK.
Then you won’t have to be bothered by the poor local content.
You will never switch back. Australia is a drop in the ocean. Much better content overseas (real reason new media in Australia are crying out)
think taxi’s to uber
Telstra to Skype
Bank to Currency Fair
Hotel to Airbnb
No wonder Local Australia wan’ts them to pay. The lack of competion worked well till the internet came, now we have real products and excellent services from these new players.
Long live GOOGLE
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I’m sorry, but publishers milked the free traffic from Google and Facebook for years when it was in their favour, and once the playing field tilted out of their favour, they refused to adapt. Good to see the government really pushing to support innovative businesses (who happily cut local jobs and offshore where they can).
I also find it highly hypocritical that they complain about a duopoly of power given News and Nine’s stranglehold on print and digital media and the operating models they had traditionally run. Without sounding sycophantic Facebook and Google, but they have democratised the ability to advertise in a way that News, Fairfax (RIP) and the TV networks were never willing to.
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Google brings more choice and variety than was ever brought to me by Nine, News Ltd Fairfax etc . The ACCC is trying to fight the natural competitive, disruptive dynamics of markets but applying regulation which protects incumbents. In essence that is anti-competitive ! ACCC should focus on protecting the rights of consumers to choice of what and where they get their news rather than championing for large, irrelevant news corporations.
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because we’ve never had a media concentration (monopoly/duopoly) problem in australia…
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