Imagine a world without Google, the search engine so widespread that it is the starting point for more than five billion queries a day. This is the reality that Australia faces, where the tech giant threatens to disconnect its homepage in an impasse with the government.
Google is opposed to a planned law that would force the company and Facebook Inc. to pay Australian publishers for news content. The Internet juggernaut ultimatum to local lawmakers – changing legislation, or else – left a digital vacuum hanging over a nation that essentially knows only one way to browse the web. Google performs 95% of Internet searches in Australia.
The potential consequences of the fight go far beyond Australia, to Google, owned by Alphabet Inc., whose dominance of global advertising has made it a target for vigilantes around the world. If the company gives up in Australia, the news payment law risks becoming a model for jurisdictions like Canada and the European Union that are following the dispute and want to shorten Google’s leadership.
But deactivating what is arguably the most famous site in the world would deliver all of Australia to rivals, including Microsoft Corp’s Bing. and DuckDuckGo, which failed to dislodge Google as a gateway to the web. These search engine competitors would suddenly have a playground for development and a basis for moving forward on the global stage.
Software engineering student Patrick Smith exemplifies Australia’s dependence on Google. The 24-year-old from Canberra said he sometimes does 400 Google searches a day to help him study, keep up with the news and look for recipes. Smith said his browser from the previous day shows 150 searches – in just five hours.
“The prospect of disappearing from Google search is, at best, daunting,” said Smith. “It is quite a reflection of me to research something, anything, which I am not sure of.”
Searching for ‘the best beach in Sydney’ shows the variation in performance among Google’s competitors. DuckDuckGo’s first result was an advertisement for a hotel more than 1,000 kilometers away in Queensland. Search Encrypt, which touts its data protection capabilities, said: ‘It looks like there are no big matches.’ Bing suggested the Bondi Beach Post. Only Google returned a real beach, Bondi, in the first place.
Search ‘best Sydney beach’ on Google returns Bondi Beach in Australia’s largest city [File: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg]First World Legislation
The world’s first legislation will be considered by the Australian parliament from the week beginning February 15, after a senior Senate committee recommended on Friday that the bill be approved.
“The government expects all parties to continue to work constructively to reach trade agreements,” said treasurer Josh Frydenberg in a statement welcoming the Senate report.
The government says the local media industry – including News Corp. by Rupert Murdoch and the Sydney Morning Herald’s Nine Entertainment Co. publisher – was drained from the advertising giants of tech giants and should be paid fairly for the content.
Google argues that it drives traffic to its sites, and that being forced to pay to display snippets of news breaks the principle of an open Internet. It is also opposed to the law’s final offer arbitration model, which determines how much to pay publishers.
Facebook said it could prevent Australians from sharing news on its platform if the law is enacted, an unprecedented step.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc, which controls Google [File: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Bloomberg]
Australia’s entire economic output is less than Alphabet’s $ 1.4 trillion market value, so it may be surprising that the tiny, distant market suddenly becomes so important. But Internet titans are so eager to prevent Australia from setting a global precedent that Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg have invaded their calendars in recent weeks by phone calls to Prime Minister Scott Morrison or their ministers.
Sniffing out an opportunity, Microsoft President Brad Smith and CEO Satya Nadella also got in touch.
Taking the free hit, Smith told Morrison that Microsoft would invest to “ensure that Bing is comparable to our competitors”. This week, Smith wrote on a blog on Thursday that the United States should adopt its own version of Australian law.
DuckDuckGo, a search engine that claims not to track its users, is also trying to profit.
“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 in an email. Search Encrypt says its results expire after 30 minutes of inactivity.
Nonprofit alternatives have also been suggested. The Australian Greens party this month asked the government to consider creating a public property search engine instead of allowing Microsoft to meddle. “We shouldn’t be looking for another foreign giant to fill the gap,” said Senator Sarah Hanson-Young.
Google free China
Australia would certainly not be the first free Google nation in the world. In China, where the site is blocked, Baidu Inc. is the main search engine.
But Australia would stand out as a Westernized democracy without access to the site and Google’s departure could delay the country for years in terms of quick access to information.
With two decades of data in the vault and processing about 5.5 billion searches a day, Google is considered unparalleled in personalizing results for individuals and their idiosyncrasies.
“Bing will not be able to compete with Google for quality outside of the blocks,” said Daniel Angus, associate professor of digital communication at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane. “Australians may have to relearn how to use the survey.”
Google again performed best in the poll, ‘Australia’s leader’, showing Morrison and his Liberal party at the top of the page – from an official government website. Bing gave similar details, although it removed them from Wikipedia. DuckDuckGo offered advertisements for team leader jobs in Western Australia. Search encryption has left a blank once again.
Soothing Posture
There are signs that Google’s tough line may be easing. Morrison said that his meeting with the company was “constructive” and “should be a great incentive for them to engage in the process”. Google declined to comment on the meeting, although it said in a statement that it proposes to compensate publishers through its News Showcase product, for which the company pays for selected media to display curated content.
Some older Australians who lived in a world before Google are less concerned. Gino Porro, the 58-year-old owner of Li’l Darlin bar and restaurant in Darlinghurst, Sydney, uses Google and has not heard of any other search engine. But he sees a return of word of mouth recommendations, rather than online reviews, if Google closes its homepage. “Customer service is important, not Google,” he said.
But, back in Canberra, the search student at Google Smith is concerned about the possible shutdown and performance of a replacement.
“I honestly feel that my life would become significantly more difficult,” he said.