CANBERRA, Australia (AP) – The Australian Prime Minister said on Monday that Microsoft is confident it could fill the gap if Google threatens to remove its search engine from Australia.
A Google executive said in a Senate meeting last month that his search engine will likely be unavailable in Australia if the government continues its plans to make the tech giants pay for news content.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said he has since spoken with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about his Bing search engine filling the space.
“I can tell you, Microsoft is pretty confident” that Australians would not be worse off, Morrison told the Australian National Press Club.
“These are big tech companies and what’s important to Australia, I think, is that we set the right rules for our people,” Morrison said.
“With a news environment in this country that is sustainable and commercially supported, then this is vital to how democracies work,” he added.
Although Bing is the second most popular search engine in Australia, it requires only 3.7% of the market share, the Australian newspaper reported. Google says it needs 95%.
Nadella initiated the Zoom conversation with Morrison last week, the newspaper reported.
A Microsoft spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The government’s proposed code of conduct seeks to ensure that Google and Facebook pay Australian media companies fairly for the use of news content that the tech giants siphon off from news sites.
Google has come under pressure from authorities elsewhere to pay for the news. Last month, he signed an agreement with a group of French publishers paving the way for the company to make digital copyright payments. Under the agreement, Google will negotiate individual licensing agreements with newspapers, with payments based on factors such as the amount published daily and monthly traffic to the website.
But Google is resisting the Australian plan because it would have less control over how much it should pay. Under the Australian system, if an online platform and a news firm cannot agree on a price for the news, an arbitration committee will make a binding payment decision.
Morrison said he would like to see “greater alignment between the world’s economies” on such antitrust issues and competition policies.