Life without Google: Australia faces the unimaginable

Imagine a world without Google, the dominant search engine which is the starting point for more than five billion queries per day. It is the reality of australia, where the tech giant threatens to shut down its search engine in a confrontation with the government.

Google opposes a bill that would force the company and Facebook Inc. to pay Australian media outlets to use their content. The internet giant’s ultimatum to local lawmakers threatens to leave a digital void in a nation that basically knows only one way to surf the web. 95% of Internet searches in Australia are done through Google.

Google threatens to “shut down” its search engine

The possible consequences of the litigation extend far beyond Australia for Google, owned by Alphabet Inc., whose dominance of global advertising has made it a target for regulators around the world. If the company pulls out of Australia, the law risks becoming a model for jurisdictions like Canada and the European Union that follow the dispute and want to reduce Google’s leadership.

But disabling what is arguably the world’s most famous website would put all of Australia on its rivals, including Microsoft Corp. Bing and DuckDuckGo, which failed to replace Google as a gateway to the web. These competitors would suddenly have a place of entertainment for development and a base for advancing on the world stage.

Software engineering student Patrick Smith illustrates Google’s dependence on Australia. The 24-year-old from Canberra said he sometimes does 400 Google searches a day for his studies, catching up to the news and researching recipes. As an example, he noted that his browser from the previous day displayed 150 searches in just five hours.

“The possibility of Google searches going down is terrifying at best,” Smith said.

Google will pay French media for its content

World’s first legislation

The first legislation in the world will be discussed by the Australian Parliament from the week of February 15 after a Senate committee recommended Friday that the bill pass.

“The government hopes that all parties will continue to work constructively to reach trade agreements,” Minister Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said in a statement following the Senate report.

The government claims that the local media industry —Including News Corp. by Rupert Murdoch and Nine Entertainment Co. published by the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper— lost ad revenue to tech giants and you should be paid fairly for the content.

Google claims that it brings traffic to its websites and that being forced to pay to view news clips violates the principle of an open internet. He also opposes the final offer arbitration model of the law that determines how much he must pay to the media.

Facebook, for its part, said it could prevent Australians from sharing information on its platform if the law was enacted, an unprecedented measure.