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– Google threatened to make its search engine unavailable in Australia on Friday if the government went ahead with plans to make tech giants pay for news content. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison quickly retaliated, saying, “We do not respond to threats,” the AP said. “Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia,” Morrison told reporters in Brisbane. “It’s done in our parliament. It’s done by our government. And that’s how it works here in Australia.” The showdown highlights Australia’s leading role in the global movement to push back against the outsized influence of US technology giants on the news sector. Morrison’s comments came after Mel Silva, Google Australia and New Zealand’s general manager, told a Senate investigation into the bill that the new rules would be unworkable.
“If this version of the code were to become law, we would have no choice but to make Google Search no longer available in Australia,” Silva told senators. “And that would be a bad outcome not only for us, but also for the Australian population, media diversity and the small businesses that use our products every day.” The code of conduct proposed by the government aims to make Google and Facebook pay Australian media companies fairly for using news content that the tech giants are transferring from news sites. As in many other countries, Google dominates internet searches in Australia. Facebook is also against the rules and has threatened to remove news stories from its site in Australia. Simon Milner, a Facebook vice president, said the sheer number of deals it would have to close would be unworkable. (Read more Google Stories.)