Google says Australian antitrust law would hit small content creators

Google said Monday that the proposed incredible legislation in Australia would adversely affect individual content creators and channel operators.

Google said last month’s proposed law would force technology companies to pay for news published on their social media websites that would artificially help their search rankings, attract more viewers to their platform and give them unfair advantage over smaller contributors running their own websites or YouTube channels.

Google’s YouTube video service allows individuals and companies to create channels featuring advertisements that create revenue for both them and YouTube.

The US tech giant said the law may also obligate it to give big news firms confidential data about systems that they could use to try to appear higher in rankings on YouTube, resulting in fewer views for content of smaller businesses.

“This law wouldn’t just impact the way Google and YouTube work with news media businesses – it would impact all of our Australian users,” Google Australia Managing Director Mel Silva said in a post titled “Open letter to Australians”.

Australia at the end of July said it aimed to introduce the law this year requiring technology companies such as Google and Facebook Inc to pay media companies for news content.

According to government estimated, now media companies have sunk into advertising revenue in the age of the Internet. For every online advertising in Australia spent A$100 ($71.93) excluding classifieds, and nearly a third goes to Google and Facebook.

However, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the country’s competition watchdog, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.