(Newser)
– Google threatened on Friday that it would make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government continued its plans to make the tech giants pay for news content. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison quickly rejected it, saying “we are not responding to threats”, according to AP. “Australia sets our rules for the things you can do in Australia,” Morrison told reporters in Brisbane. “That’s what we do in our Parliament. It’s done by our government. And that’s how things work here in Australia.” The confrontation highlights Australia’s leading role in the global movement to push back against the oversized influence of US tech giants on the news business. Morrison’s comments came after Mel Silva, chief executive of Google Australia and New Zealand, told a Senate inquiry into the bill that the new rules would be ineffective.
“If this version of the code became law, it would give us no choice but to stop the Google search available in Australia,” Silva told senators. “And it would be a negative outcome not only for us, but for the Australian people, for the diversity of the media and for the small businesses that use our products every day.” The government’s proposed code of conduct aims to get Google and Facebook to pay Australian media companies fairly for the use of news content that tech giants siphon off news sites. As in many other countries, Google dominates Internet searches in Australia. Facebook also opposes the rules and has threatened to remove the news from its Australian site. Simon Milner, Facebook’s vice president, said the large volume of transactions he should complete would be unfeasible. (Read more Google articles.)