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WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) – Google on Friday threatened to make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government goes ahead with its plan to charge tech giants for news content.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison quickly retaliated, saying “we are not responding to threats”.
“Australia sets our rules for what you can do in Australia,” Morrison told reporters in Brisbane. “It is done in our Parliament. It is done by our government. And that’s the way things work here in Australia. ”
Morrison’s comments came after Mel Silva, chief executive of Google Australia and New Zealand, said during a Senate inquiry into the bill that the new rules would be unworkable.
“If this version of the code becomes law, it would give us no choice but to stop making Google search available in Australia,” Silva told senators. “And that would be a bad result not only for us, but also for the Australian people, the diverse media and the small businesses that use our products every day.”
The government’s proposed mandatory code of conduct aims to ensure that Google and Facebook fairly pay Australian media companies for the use of news content they siphon off news sites.
Silva said he was prepared to pay a large and diverse group of news publishers for the value they add, but not under the proposed rules, which included payments for links and snippets.
She said the code’s “biased arbitrage model” also posed unmanageable financial and operational risks for Google. She suggested a series of adjustments to the bill.
“We believe there is a way forward,” 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 done through Google.
Asked by a senator about how much tax he pays, Silva said last year he paid around A $ 59 million ($ 46 million) out of revenues of A $ 4.8 billion ($ 3.7 billions of dollars).
Facebook is also opposing the rules and has threatened to remove the news from its site in Australia. Simon Milner, vice president of Facebook, said the sheer volume of deals he is expected to make would be unworkable.
The Australian Institute, an independent think tank, said lawmakers should stand firm against bullying by Google.
“Google’s testimony today is part of a pattern of threatening behavior that frightens anyone who appreciates our democracy,” said Peter Lewis, director of the institute’s Center for Responsible Technology.
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