WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) – Google threatened on Friday that it would make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government continued 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”.
“Australia sets our rules for the things you can do in Australia,” Morrison told reporters in Brisbane. “It simply came to our notice then. It is made by our government. And that’s how things work here in Australia. ”
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 ensure that Google and Facebook pay Australian media companies fairly for the use of news content that they siphon off from news sites.
Silva said he was willing to pay a large and diverse group of news editors for the value they added, but not according to the proposed rules, which included payments for links and snippets.
She said the code’s “biased arbitrage model” also poses difficult financial and operational risks for Google to manage. She suggested a number of changes to the bill.
“We believe there is a viable way forward,” Silva said.
As in many other countries, Google dominates Internet searches in Australia. Silva told senators that about 95% of searches in the country are done through Google.
Asked by a senator how much he pays the tax, Silva said last year that he paid about A $ 59 million ($ 46 million) for A $ 4.8 billion ($ 3.7 billion) in revenue. .
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.
The Australia Institute, an independent think tank, said lawmakers should stand firm against Google’s aggression.
“Today’s Google testimony is part of a pattern of threatening behavior that is appalling to anyone who appreciates our democracy,” said Peter Lewis, director of the institute’s Center for Responsible Technology.