Tech giant Google is fighting back against the ACCC’s mandatory news bargaining legislation – warning Australians the changes would put the way Aussies use Google “at risk”.
In an extraordinary open letter posted to the front page of Google – the United States company declared the Australian government was making “enormous and unreasonable demands”.
The tech behemoth – which earned $US160 billion revenue in 2019 – also described Australia’s struggling news sector as “big news” in a bid to convince Australians to back Google.
“We need to let you know about new Government regulation that will hurt how Australians use Google Search and YouTube,” Google wrote.
“A proposed law, the News media Bargaining Code, would force us to provide you with a dramatically worse Google Search and YouTube, could lead to your data being handed over to big news businesses, and would put the free services you use at risk in Australia.”
Google alone has ripped hundreds and millions of dollars from Australian media companies in recent years and earned $4.3 billion in Australian advertising revenue in 2019.
The ACCC draft mandatory code-of-conduct would leave Facebook and Google vulnerable to losing 10 per cent of their Australian turnover if they refuse to fairly pay for news.
When the draft code was announced in late July, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said tech giants Google and Facebook had not made adequate progress towards paying companies for original journalism.
“The influence of these digital platforms, namely Google and Facebook, has grown and our regulatory framework has not kept up and as result there is a very unequal bargaining position between Australian news media businesses that produce original content and the digital platforms,” Mr Frydenberg said.
“We as a government tasked the ACCC to undertake a detailed world leading study which they did over a period of 18-months and their recommendation was for a code to govern those relationships between those digital platforms and the Australian news businesses.
“It became apparent to us a number of months ago that we were not making progress on that critical issue of paying for content, hence we are moving down the path of a mandatory code.”
Mr Frydenberg also said tech giants would also be forced to release user data and provide transparency about algorithms used to rank news stories.
“A mandatory code that governs those relationships and covers issues such as access to user data, the transparency of algorithms used by digital platforms for ranking and the presentation of media content as well of course payment for content,” he said.
“What we have sought to do is create a level playing field to ensure a fair go for Australian news businesses and when they generate original content, they are fairly paid for it.”
