Imagine a world without Google, the search engine so ubiquitous that it is the starting point for more than five billion searches per day. Such is the reality facing Australia, where the technology giant threatens to disconnect its homepage in an impasse with the government.
Google opposes a planned law that the company and Facebook Inc. would force Australian publishers to pay for news content. The internet juggernaut’s ultimatum to local lawmakers – change the law or else – has left a digital vacuum over a country that essentially has only one way to navigate the internet. Google performs 95% of internet searches in Australia.
Potential ramifications of the feud extend well beyond Australia to Google, owned by Alphabet Inc., whose dominance of global advertising has made it a target for watchdogs around the world. If the company pulls out of Australia, the pay-for-news law threatens to become a template for jurisdictions, including Canada and the European Union, following the feud and trying to cut Google’s lead.
But taking down what is arguably the world’s most famous website would hand all of Australia to rivals, including Microsoft Corp.’s Bing and DuckDuckGo, who have failed to oust Google as the gateway to the web. These search engine competitors would suddenly have a playground for development and gain a foothold to get ahead on the global stage.
Patrick Smith, a software engineering student, exemplifies Australia’s reliance on Google. The 24-year-old from Canberra said he sometimes collects 400 Google searches a day to help with his studies, catch up on news and look up recipes. Smith said his browser showed 150 searches from the previous day – in just five hours.
“The prospect of Google Search disappearing is scary at best,” said Smith. “It’s quite a reflex of mine to Google anything, whatever, of which I’m not even a little sure.”
Searching for ‘Sydney’s best beach’ reveals the performance differences between Google’s competitors. DuckDuckGo’s first result was an advertisement for a hotel more than 1,000 miles away in Queensland. Search Encrypt, praising its data protection prowess, said, “It doesn’t seem like there are any good matches.” Bing suggested Bondi Beach Post Office. Only Google brought back a real beach first, Bondi.
Searching for ‘best beach Sydney’ on Google returns Bondi Beach in Australia’s largest city [File: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg]First legislation in the world
The world first will be considered by the Australian parliament from the week beginning February 15, after a key Senate committee recommended the bill be passed on Friday.
“The government expects all parties to continue to work constructively toward commercial agreements,” Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said in a statement welcoming the Senate report.
The government says the local media industry – including Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and Sydney Morning Herald publisher Nine Entertainment Co. – has been denied ad revenue by the tech giants and paid fairly for content.
Google claims that the traffic to their websites, and that being forced to pay to display news clips is against the principle of an open internet. It also opposes the law’s arbitration model that dictates how much it must pay publishers.
Facebook has said it could stop Australians from sharing news on its platform if the law passes, an unprecedented move.
Sundar Pichai, chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc, which controls Google [File: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Bloomberg]
Australia’s total economic output is less than Alphabet’s $ 1.4 trillion market value, so it may be surprising that the distant and small market is suddenly so important. But the internet titans are so eager to prevent Australia from setting a global precedent that Facebook’s Alphabet Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg have broken into their diaries in recent weeks for phone calls with Prime Minister Scott Morrison or his ministers.
Microsoft President Brad Smith and CEO Satya Nadella also sniffed at an opportunity.
Smith grabbed the free hit and told Morrison Microsoft would invest to “make Bing on par with our competitors.” This week, Smith wrote in a blog post on Thursday that the US should adopt its own version of Australian law.
DuckDuckGo, a search engine that claims not to track its users, is also trying to make money.
“There is a growing global demand for online privacy and Australians don’t have to wait for government action” to stop using Google, DuckDuckGo said by email. Search Encrypt says the results will expire after 30 minutes of inactivity.
Non-profit alternatives have also been proposed. Australia’s Greens Party asked the government this month to consider setting up a publicly owned search engine rather than allowing Microsoft. “We shouldn’t look for another foreign giant to close the gap,” said Senator Sarah Hanson-Young.
Google free China
Of course, Australia wouldn’t be the world’s first Google-free country. In China, where the site has been blocked, Baidu Inc. the leading search engine.
But Australia would stand out as a Westernized democracy with no access to the site, and Google’s departure could take the nation back years in terms of quick access to information.
With 20 years of data in the vault and processing an estimated 5.5 billion searches per day, Google is considered unmatched in tailoring results to individuals and their idiosyncrasies.
“Bing will not be able to compete with Google on quality out of the blocks,” said Daniel Angus, associate professor of digital communications in Brisbane at Queensland University of Technology. “Australians may need to relearn how to use search.”
Google once again performed best under the search query ‘leader of australia’, with Morrison and his liberal party at the top of the page – sourced from an official government site. Bing provided similar details, but took it from Wikipedia. DuckDuckGo offered ads for team leader jobs in Western Australia. Search Encrypt drew an empty space again.
Soothing attitude
There are signs that Google’s tough stance could soften. Morrison said his meeting with the company was “constructive” and should “give them great encouragement to participate in the process.” Google declined to comment on the meeting, although it said in a statement that it is proposing to compensate publishers through its News Showcase product, with the company paying selected media to display curated content.
Some older Australians who have lived in a pre-Google world are less concerned. Gino Porro, 58-year-old owner of the Li’l Darlin bar and restaurant in Darlinghurst, Sydney, uses Google and has never heard of any other search engines. But he sees a return of word of mouth instead of online reviews when Google closes the homepage. “Customer service is important, not Google,” he said.
But back in Canberra, Googling student Smith worries about the possible closure and how well a replacement would perform.
“I really feel like my life was going to be significantly more difficult,” he said.