Google on Friday threatened to make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government went ahead with plans to make tech giants pay for news content.
According to the report, the mandatory code of conduct proposed by the government aims to make Google and Facebook pay Australian media companies fairly for using news content they siphon from news sites.
“Coupled with the unmanageable financial and operational risk if this version of the Code were to become law, it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia,” Mel Silva, managing director for Australia and New Zealand, told a Senate committee.
The Australian government itself has been very clear on how it plans to take things forward. Responding to Google’s statements, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government would not respond to threats.
Talking to the media, he said, “Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia. That’s done in our Parliament. It’s done by our government, and that’s how things work here in Australia. People who want to work with that, in Australia, you’re very welcome. But we don’t respond to threats.” Morrison’s comments came after Mel Silva, the managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand.
On the other hand, after revealing the news a group of netizens has makes a massive buzz on social media. They have started to make various criticisms of Google’s monopoly dominance.
Here are some Tweets of netizens:
Any guess, who controls Internet in a country?
Absolute monopolistic platforms that are default for Internet consumers.
Time to learn, not to add more and more, services dependence on them.https://t.co/Q7EPFhA3Gt— Vijay Shekhar Sharma (@vijayshekhar) January 22, 2021
Tech giant with a virtual monopoly having an almighty tantrum cause it doesn’t want to pay for content.
https://t.co/tz0chwrIPT— Rita Panahi (@RitaPanahi) January 22, 2021
