from Hacker News

Google threatens to disable search in Australia if media code becomes law

by karimford on 1/22/21, 12:07 AM with 18 comments

  • by ocdtrekkie on 1/22/21, 1:49 AM

    If Google threatening to leave can undo the law, than Google knows they can threaten it again and again, any time they don't get what they want.

    Stand firm, Australia. Let them leave. You'll be better off without these bullies in your country.

  • by tiew9Vii on 1/22/21, 2:12 AM

    I'm not fully understanding the Australian media's issue with Google.

    Google shows links or a small snippet of news articles, a user may decide hey I want to read that and clicks the link and goes to the media outlets website to read more. This is driving traffic to media websites?

    If it wasn't for Google surfacing the content, unless the user was a daily reader of that specific media outlet that user would never of visited that media outlet to view the article.

    I get it if one media outlet is ranked higher than another media outlet that can/may be unfair and some transparency on how news search results are ranked may help, it may also do the reverse if you no the rank algorithm you can game it.

    I'm not sure how making Google pay to show a link to a news story helps though other than Murdoch trying to prop up there news properties that look to have reduced readership.

    Have I missed anything or miss-understood the problem?

  • by airbreather on 1/22/21, 12:09 AM

    No great loss based on the excessive amount of commercialisation of the first three or pages of results we seem to get now.

  • by fileoffset on 1/22/21, 5:55 AM

  • by King-Aaron on 1/22/21, 2:51 AM

    While this thread is older, there is a more involved discussion taking place here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25867264

  • by hsaliak on 1/22/21, 1:24 AM

    This is un googley behavior

  • by crb002 on 1/22/21, 3:35 AM

    Musk's micro-satellites beat them to market.

  • by glaucon on 1/22/21, 1:54 AM

    Oh come on Google, surely you can think of a better way to make it screamingly clear to the entire planet that you hold a monopoly that badly needs breaking up ?