WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) – Google on Friday threatened to make its search engine unavailable in Australia if the government pursued plans to make tech giants pay for news content.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison responded quickly, saying “we don’t respond to threats”.
“Australia sets our rules for things you can do in Australia,” Morrison told reporters in Brisbane. “This is done in our Parliament. It is done by our government. And this is how things work here in Australia ”.
Morrison’s comments came after Mel Silva, the managing director of Google Australia and New Zealand, said in a Senate investigation of the bill that the new rules would be unworkable.
“If this version of the code were to become law, we would have no real choice but to stop making Google’s search available in Australia,” Silva told senators. “And that would be a bad result not only for us, but also for the Australian people, the diversity of the media and the small businesses that use our products every day.”
The mandatory code of conduct proposed by the government aims to get Google and Facebook to pay Australian media companies fairly for the use of news content they extract from news sites.
Silva said he was willing to pay a broad and diverse group of news editors for the amount they added, but not according to the proposed rules, which include payments for links and snippets.
She said the code’s “biased arbitration model” also posed uncontrollable financial and operational risks to Google. She suggested a number of adjustments to the account.
“We feel that there is a viable path to follow,” said Silva.
As in many other countries, Google dominates Internet searches in Australia. Silva told senators that 95% of the polls in the country are done by Google.
Asked by a senator how much tax he pays, Silva said last year that he paid about 59 million Australian dollars ($ 46 million) on revenues of AU $ 4.8 billion ($ 3.7 billion).
Facebook also opposes the rules and has threatened to remove the news from its website in Australia. Simon Milner, vice president of Facebook, said that the large volume of business he would have to close would be unfeasible.
The Australia Institute, an independent think tank, said lawmakers should stand firm against Google’s intimidation.
“Google’s testimony today is part of a threatening pattern of behavior that is frightening for anyone who values our democracy,” said Peter Lewis, director of the institute’s Center for Responsible Technology.