[strken]

This is absolutely ridiculous legislation, because it doesn't give Google the option of just removing all these news sources from search results if their asking price is too high. In effect, there's no choice but to pull the entirety of search out of Australia, or pay whatever arbitrary price the arbitration process comes up with. It's like forcing internationally-owned supermarkets to stock newspapers at a price determined initially by the Murdoch press and in the case of disputes by a protectionist government panel, or leave the country entirely.

[sandworm101]

Forcing the provider of a service to carry all local newspapers? Sounds a bit like net neutrality to me. If we see google news as a common carrier of sorts, forcing it to carry everything at fixed prices seems appropriate. Whether the price is too high, or whether one body or another should set the price, is something that can be negotiated.

[username90]

Google already carry all local newspapers at a fixed rate. The Australian government just decided to increase the rate to a level Google argue they can't operate under and therefore would have to exit.

[levosmetalo]

So let them exit then. It's not like Google has the right to set prices for themselves.

It's similar to Germany where, i.e. book prices are fixed, and every store must sell for the same price, whether they like it or not. Of course, they have a choice not to sell.

[username90]

Yeah, that is what happens, just that people complain that Google says they are about to exit.

[nr2x]

And yet google requires new users to agree to arbitration when creating accounts. Good for the goose...

[1234throwaway]

You can't use your absolute power in the marketplace to bully people, only google and other tech giants are allowed to do that!

[strken]

I'm fine with using your arbitrary power to regulate companies in an effective way, but when you leave them no recourse but to agree to your demands or pull their most useful product out of your country, you don't get to turn around and act like they're leaving out of spite.

[robin21]

> Leave them no recourse

They can go along with it and then report the impact of it on their 5bn yearly profit and then they can leave not out of spite.

I suspect it’s a tiny impact on their profits ans this is just an attempt to build support from public. Problem is everybody hates them now. I’d gladly use other products if they didn’t have a monopoly.

[strken]

Why should we act to funnel Google's profits to nobody except large media outlets over a certain revenue threshold, the largest group of which are owned by Rupert Murdoch?

Why can't we allow all Australian businesses and individuals to receive payments from Google's money hose if they want to?

Why can't we standardise some API for doing so? robots.txt or .well-known/summary-fees.json or something of that sort would work fine.

Why can't Google hide results that cost too much to show? Surely choosing your suppliers is a foundational principle of any market.

I don't have an ideological problem with charging them for showing a link summary or regulating what price negotiation should look like, I have an strategic problem with this oddly specific and coercive way of doing so.

[ocdtrekkie]

No law less than this would work, because Google is too powerful and adept at pressuring any other party it has to deal with to get its way. You can see this when a law similar to what you suggest was passed in Spain and Google shut down just Google News. Or when Germany passed a similar law, without a requirement to participate, and Google just made it clear if publishers didn't give Google a license for free they'd be booted off search.

Google is like the mob, in that you literally have to build a whole new law around dealing with it (RICO) that lets you come at the edge and use that to come at the head of the snake.