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Microsoft backs Australian law forcing Google to pay for news links (arstechnica.com)
14 points by Tepix on Feb 3, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 8 comments



The news media in my country (not AU) has become more and more tabloid like, with click bait and all sorts of lowest common denominator articles, even commissioning articles directly from the dailymail.

News media has been for the last 10 years a race to the bottom of low quality, opinion pieces, copy paste jobs from reddit and twitter, and now they're reaping the costs of their bias, and laziness, and partisan ship.

Stuff like this to me reeks of an industry failing to adapt to the internet age, doing all the wrong things, and now they want to use the law, to get more money because they think they deserve more?

The problem is these massive entities who had prime time spots on TV, radio are being obsoleted by YouTube and Netflix, Spotify, Podcasts, and blogging platforms on a 10th of the budget, Why would I go to a news site to get informed about a new policy or something a politician said when I can just go direct to the source and remove all the editorial garbage, and opinions, and that bloody awful style of interview where every question is loaded and the interviewee never has time to properly explain themselves.


The law feels backwards to me; how much traffic would these sites be getting without Google?

If anything, they should be paying Google for the free traffic.


News: You must pay us to show our product. Google: ok, then we won’t site them? News: What?! Don’t show our product? Preposterous! Illegal!


If Google withdraws from Australia, wouldn’t the law immediately apply to Microsoft because it is now the (or one of the) dominant search engine?


Yes, except Microsoft has indicated it would be willing to cut deals.


I wonder how it would work out if that happens. There are more to the law than linking fees, such as user data sharing and advanced notification of algorithm changes. In my opinion Microsoft probably cares less about those issues than Google.


Why leave the Australian market? Google controls their search algorithm. Just list Australian news at page 10 or whatever.


There are specific provisions in the draft law which forbid this.




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