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What if Google and Facebook just said “No, thank you.”? I think Google and Facebook have more power in this relationship, which might say something about the te

What if Google and Facebook just said “No, thank you.”? I think Google and Facebook have more power in this relationship, which might say something about the tech giants. The only possible thing the Aussies could do is block the websites, and that sounds like political suicide to me. I’m guessing the companies will decide to play ball, but if other countries start to follow suit, it might be interesting to see what happens if they start pushing back.

luckylion 6y ago
> The only possible thing the Aussies could do is block the websites, and that sounds like political suicide to me. The first thing they could do is fine them. Google and FB might say "ha! but we don't have bank accounts in Australia!" and the government will simply collect from companies in Australia that have outstanding bills from Google for e.g. Adwords or Google Cloud. Google can still run their websites to be reachable from Australia, but they wouldn't be able to do business in Australia. And what's the point of running an ad tech empire if you can't make money off of it?
- antjanus 6y ago
  plus, it'll be easier for them to obfuscate the data somehow and share some specific piece of information that's technically correct but is useless. They can also just drag this out in court for a long time until everyone forgets, they restructure how their money works, and then they'll share the useless info freely. Just my take on the situation.
- RareSoft 6y ago
  Could Australian ISPs be instructed to just blacklist Google's and Facebook's Ad servers nationally?
  - shakna 6y ago
    There are currently several sites banned in Australia, and the blacklisting took the form of ISPs hijacking the DNS lookup. Which means it is totally ineffective. Our government is not well known for mandating the right tool for the right job, when it comes to tech.
    - batiudrami 6y ago
      Sure but custom DNS is not something everyone can or will do, and businesses certainly won't allow it.
      - shakna 6y ago
        Sure, but there are a few caveats to that: + Firefox doesn't use the system DNS by default anymore (Defaults to the DoH provider, usually Cloudflare) + Chrome doesn't use the system DNS by default anymore (Defaults to Google's) + Businesses often set the default DNS to use Google's, not their ISPs.
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    China has the technology.
  - tikkabhuna 6y ago
    Perhaps the Australian government would prohibit Australian companies from advertising with FB/Google?
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  Couldn't Google just remove sites demanding special treatment from their search results? It would be right in line with their current behavior, ethically and mechanically; a media company whining to the Australian government for protectionism is just a high-overhead way of disallowing all crawler traffic in robots.txt. Less pithily: Google crawls the web, offering a standard set of terms on which it does so. No website is compelled to accept these terms and have their links displayed on google.com, even if they're public-facing. The mechanism by which you can opt out, fully or partially, is a robots.txt file specifying to the crawler what it can and can't crawl and display. Australian media companies are saying that they don't accept Google's linking terms; they proposed counter-terms of licensing fees for linking, and Google can refuse them. As the two sides have failed to agree to terms on which the media sites can be linked to by Google, they fall neatly into the category of a website blocking robots.txt
- notatoad 6y ago
  Fine them for what though? they don't seem to be breaking any regulations, they just have a lot of money and the local media companies want some of it. that's not a fine.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > they don't seem to be breaking any regulations, they just have a lot of money and the local media companies want some of it. That's a great way to get a law passed ;) I'm not saying that I believe the Australian government has a legitimate case or anything, just that between "Google can do whatever it likes" and "all of Google's websites are blocked at ISP levels", there are a few levels of escalation that they can pick.
    - dodobirdlord 6y ago
      True, but the escalation goes in both directions. Google and Facebook are American companies, Australia and the US have existing free-trade agreements. Imposing fines on foreign businesses to force them to roll over for the benefit of local businesses is exactly the sort of thing that free-trade agreements forbid in no unclear terms. There are a lot of factors at play. Trump dislikes Google because the conservative hive mind has turned against it, but favors Facebook because it's supposedly essential to his campaign operations. Plus he's got a protectionist bent and loves trade sanctions.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        I doubt that anything will happen, really. It's a negotiation, the Australian government says "give us all your money", Google says "you're not getting one cent" and in the end Google will favor traditional media companies' sites a bit more ("fighting fake news with real information"), donate to a few journalism programs and possibly start creator-ad-share on news.
  - blondin 6y ago
    feel like we discussed this here before and it was a different country (france?) so the issues is using content in google news or in snippets shown in google search results. i commented before that i seldom leave news or the main search anymore because of these snippets. why isn't it fair that the ads revenue is shared with these news publishers if their content is taken?
- qtplatypus 6y ago
  Google has office space and server farms in Australia. Also Australia has treaties with the us that allow the Australian government to fine US corporations.
ta1771 6y ago
Forget which country it is, but there's already another that's pushing this on Google (for their News aggregator).
- panda88888 6y ago
  France?
  - blarglechien 6y ago
    correct, It was France. Last week
friendlybus 6y ago
The Aussie government’s dilemma is to avoid having to build their own services to fill a US tech gap. Politicians have stated they would prefer not to build their own services from the ground up. I think there’s an element of Australian politics that would push for homegrown stuff over google/fb.
- joncrane 6y ago
  No one HAS to build those services. The services Google and FB provide are 100% nonessential to successful society. Correct me if I'm wrong, but alternatives already exist for both.
  - Bnshsysjab 6y ago
    most Australian news outlets are 100% non essential click bait trash, too.
    - 0xy 6y ago
      I'd say all of them, particularly the state media which have journalistic policies that allow them to skirt the issuing of retractions for months (ABC) or not at all (SBS). At least the private sector media will retract and correct in a reasonable period of time, in my experience both Fairfax and News Corp, although they're also generally rags at this point.
      - Bnshsysjab 6y ago
        Interesting point, do you have any examples? I’m generally left swinging but find the general style used by sbs and abc are generally less click baity and manipulative but are at times pretty left swinging themselves. Context: left = progressive, right = conservative. I think those terms switch in some countries so figured id mention.
        0xy 6y ago
        After requesting a retraction for some false news on SBS' website, I was informed after a very lengthy delay that they did not issue retractions to articles unless there is a complaint received within an arbitrary period of time. There's that, then there's the fact ACMA has zero oversight over SBS' online operations because they can only regulate their television content. For the ABC, on two separate occasions I reported some pretty egregious incorrect reporting and both times retractions occurred over a month later. Contrast this to the retractions I've gotten from the private sector. A reporter on a News Corp website replied to my email in under 10 minutes (!!) and issued a retraction. A reported for Fairfax similarly retracted a point in an article the following day after a complaint. So, the contrast is stark and revealing. ABC and SBS will lie to you with impunity and zero oversight, while the private sector at least has the decency to correct themselves in a reasonable period of time.
jariel 6y ago
It would be crazy for G/FB to play that kind of hardball. For Google, it would be an existential and permanent loss of business. Imagine if you woke up and G was not available in your country? You switch to an alternative: Bing, DDG etc.. Alternatives that many Aussies may not have really been aware of. And now, 100% of G's user base is being 'conditioned' on competitors' products - their default behavior, the icons they click, the default search engine for browsers changing over. And for most people - DDG/Bing is probably just as good as Google. A month later, G comes back to Australia, how many people bother to switch back? How many people have come to 'be fine' with something else? How many people resent G? Does the Aussie Gov, which will realize that 'search' is an essential aspect of operating ability, will even allow government workers to use a service from someone who will drop it instantly, and sign a service contract with Bing? Corporations who see it as an existential flaw and require everyone to have 3 search solutions 'at the ready'. For FB obviously it's a different story, however, a smart politician would paint FB as a 'foreign enemy' and turn the tide of populism against them as well. Because Aussie didn't 'ban' them, FB/G pulled out themselves, denying people their service, most people would 'blame them'. FB has some seemingly essential aspects in terms of communication, but I think that people would soon discover that it's not essential at all. It would be a disaster for both of them. The other risk is that this disaster becomes contagious. If G 'shuts down' in Australia - what does the UK government do? The EU gov? If they are smart they react with legislation forcing more 'choice' in search on every level.
- thanhhaimai 6y ago
  This has the assumption that Bing/DDG won't be forced out due to the same law. Would you mind clarifying why that would be true?
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
    This doesn't seem implausible to me, based on the different competitive positions that Google and Bing hold. I can imagine a scenario in which Google doesn't want to pay this tax to avoid a ripple effect across their business in other countries, while Bing opportunistically decides that paying protection money is worth establishing a foothold as the primary search engine in a developed, Anglophone country.
throwaway483284 6y ago
There would be no political suicide there. It's so easy to make Google/Facebook look evil in this case if they don't comply. Just say they are not paying taxes and getting our money abroad etc. But there is 0% chance of Google/Facebook not complying. > I think Google and Facebook have more power in this relationship Not even close.
- Mirioron 6y ago
  In the long term the issue with this is that it pushes Google and Facebook into your politics. If you use political measures to screw with them, then they'll start getting involved in the politics more and more to protect themselves. And these two companies could have a lot of influence in ways that are hard to notice.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - speedgoose 6y ago
    It sounds threatening and I hope you don't work for them but anyway, Google and Facebook are already pushing hard into politics.
    - Mirioron 6y ago
      I do not work for them. This is something I noticed over the years: as Google ran into more and more obstacles in the US that are political the more they seem to have started to meddle. Maybe it's because this is easier, but maybe it's to protect themselves. These companies don't push themselves into politics everywhere (yet), but I'm sure that the more governments squeeze them the more they'll get involved.
      - Nasrudith 6y ago
        I cynically thought that was corruption by design, politicians - trying to get them into a 'contribute to both sides so they shut up' with shakedowns. They were trying to cast Google as sexist well before anything else happened to harm their image.
Barrin92 6y ago
>interesting to see what happens if they start pushing back. Nothing. Google isn't going to forego the entire Australian market or even an economy as large as the Eurozone. They'd just pay their x% tax and suck it up and consider it cost of doing business. Google is a company, not a nation state and governments ought to stop kowtowing in front of companies. Reminds me of the story about the elephants and the rope
- rasz 6y ago
  GM and Ford had no problem extracting itself from Australia, I see no barriers for Google and FB to do the same.
  - Barrin92 6y ago
    car manufacturers leave expensive countries because there's an opportunity cost. If they can move their infrastructure from Australia to Thailand they make more money. Google already is everywhere. When they leave a country they just lose money. The marginal cost of production for large tech companies is close to zero so leaving a market virtually never makes any sense. Which is of course why all of the tech companies would personally grovel in front of the CCP if they let them in regardless under which conditions.
  - tmh88j 6y ago
    >GM and Ford had no problem extracting itself from Australia, The only thing they extracted were their manufacturing operations, GM and Ford still sell vehicles in Australia. They even have the Focus which Ford dropped for the American market! Unless Google and Facebook are going to close their offices but still provide service to Australia, that seems like an entirely different scenario.
    - postingawayonhn 6y ago
      GM will effectively end sales once they wind down the Holden brand over the next year.
KarlKemp 6y ago
Funny how this suggestion comes up every time Google or Facebook are subject of some minor regulation outside the US. Yet suggest they should give up their participation in military or US border security, two areas that are unlikely to be larger than their business in Australia (or, other times, the EU), and there’s no shortage of people explaining what a stupid trade-off that would be. I guess the tech crowds’ priorities are clear: drone targeting? So what? This is strictly business! A bit of taxation to maybe rescue the journalism a democracy depends on? To the barricades! We will gladly give up 100% of earnings to take a stand against the injustice that is...taking 5% of earnings.
- remarkEon 6y ago
  "democracy", broadly defined, does not "depend" on journalism. This narrative seems to have been invented recently as traditional outlets lost the trust of their viewers after getting things continually and fantastically wrong for at least 2 decades while a new medium (the internet) exposed how little they actually know.
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
    I'm slightly more bullish on journalism and its importance than you are, but I broadly agree. It's been embarrassing watching the death throes (or transition period) of journalism, seeing people used to being treated as high-status pathetically lash out at every possible entity involved in exposing their inadequacy. I do think that journalism plays a role in a healthy democracy. I assume that at some point, journalism will settle into a new equilibrium and play the role that it's always played, without the messianic complex that journalism as a whole is currently afflicted with (and so dramatically fails to live up to).
  - chillacy 6y ago
    Democracy definitely depends on citizens being informed enough to collectively make intelligent choices, but whether infotainment is serving that right now is debatable. In real life that happens through peer networks as much as the news.
  - uniqueid 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kerng 6y ago
Its going to be the new norm and megacorporations have to share some of there wealth. Slowly countries and laws are catching up.
- notatoad 6y ago
  there's already a way for megacorps to have to share some of their wealth - it's called taxes and subsidies, and it's a well-established system. what australia, france, spain, and anybody else who is trying to enforce revenue transfers from facebook and google to their local media companies is trying to do is called a state-funded media, but that's apparently a bad look. so instead of collecting taxes and then distributing that tax revenue to the companies they want to subsidize, they're trying to pretend this is still some sort of free-market, independently funded media. a newspaper that's staying afloat because of government-mandated payments from big tech companies isn't any more independent than one being funded directly by the state.
  - kirrent 6y ago
    You might as well say "what any government who is trying to enforce revenue transfers from spotify and youtube to their local musicians is trying to do is called a state-funded music". "What anybody who is trying to enforce revenue transfers from cinemas to local movie studios is trying to do is called a state funded film industry". "What any government who is trying to enforce revenue transfers from carbon emitting power generators to renewable generators in the form of a carbon credit is trying to do is called a state funded clean energy system." Oftentimes governments seek to redress one party whose work is being taken advantage of by another party whether that's from a principle of fairness, a desire to maintain the health of both parties, more mercenary reasons, etc. Doing this outside of the narrow regime of taxes and subsidies is not only not uncommon. It's entirely normal. Also, it's worth mentioning that the most trusted media organisation in Australia is state funded so it can't be that much of a bad look.
timwaagh 6y ago
Is it truly the only thing they could do? They could force phones to use different defaults. They could ban preinstallation of their apps. They could force preinstallation of competing apps. They could throttle them so their services get slow. They could force providers to show a large banner in addition to the site when showing it. They could I suppose add an additional tax on android phones to hurt Google, or even through the providers tax Facebook and Google usage until compliance. They could ban their apps and app stores. They could freeze bank accounts. They could send the army to destroy their hq. Banning their websites is merely the most sensible action in this situation.
roenxi 6y ago
Google isn't doing anything particularly special. I think banning them would be silly, but it isn't like they offer an irreplaceable or even particularly complicated set of services.
heavenlyblue 6y ago
>> I think Google and Facebook have more power in this relationship, which might say something about the tech giants. IMO decisions like that require power to be concentrated in limited hands.
dntbnmpls 6y ago
> What if Google and Facebook just said “No, thank you.”? We'll get anti-google/facebook/tech propaganda campaign like in the past. Remember the months/years of neverending anti-google "news"? Remember the months/years of neverending anti-facebook "news"? Followed by congressional hearings/etc. Notice how it all seemed to have stopped when google/youtube/facebook/etc decided to give state-backed "news" companies preferential treatment on their platforms? > I think Google and Facebook have more power in this relationship In purely business/financial terms, sure. But not in the media/political terms. You think these tech companies have more power than state backed news companies?

luckylion 6y ago

> The only possible thing the Aussies could do is block the websites, and that sounds like political suicide to me. The first thing they could do is fine them. Google and FB might say "ha! but we don't have bank accounts in Australia!" and the government will simply collect from companies in Australia that have outstanding bills from Google for e.g. Adwords or Google Cloud. Google can still run their websites to be reachable from Australia, but they wouldn't be able to do business in Australia. And what's the point of running an ad tech empire if you can't make money off of it?

antjanus 6y ago
plus, it'll be easier for them to obfuscate the data somehow and share some specific piece of information that's technically correct but is useless. They can also just drag this out in court for a long time until everyone forgets, they restructure how their money works, and then they'll share the useless info freely. Just my take on the situation.
RareSoft 6y ago
Could Australian ISPs be instructed to just blacklist Google's and Facebook's Ad servers nationally?
- shakna 6y ago
  There are currently several sites banned in Australia, and the blacklisting took the form of ISPs hijacking the DNS lookup. Which means it is totally ineffective. Our government is not well known for mandating the right tool for the right job, when it comes to tech.
  - batiudrami 6y ago
    Sure but custom DNS is not something everyone can or will do, and businesses certainly won't allow it.
    - shakna 6y ago
      Sure, but there are a few caveats to that: + Firefox doesn't use the system DNS by default anymore (Defaults to the DoH provider, usually Cloudflare) + Chrome doesn't use the system DNS by default anymore (Defaults to Google's) + Businesses often set the default DNS to use Google's, not their ISPs.
- speedgoose 6y ago
  China has the technology.
- tikkabhuna 6y ago
  Perhaps the Australian government would prohibit Australian companies from advertising with FB/Google?
wutbrodo 6y ago
Couldn't Google just remove sites demanding special treatment from their search results? It would be right in line with their current behavior, ethically and mechanically; a media company whining to the Australian government for protectionism is just a high-overhead way of disallowing all crawler traffic in robots.txt. Less pithily: Google crawls the web, offering a standard set of terms on which it does so. No website is compelled to accept these terms and have their links displayed on google.com, even if they're public-facing. The mechanism by which you can opt out, fully or partially, is a robots.txt file specifying to the crawler what it can and can't crawl and display. Australian media companies are saying that they don't accept Google's linking terms; they proposed counter-terms of licensing fees for linking, and Google can refuse them. As the two sides have failed to agree to terms on which the media sites can be linked to by Google, they fall neatly into the category of a website blocking robots.txt
notatoad 6y ago
Fine them for what though? they don't seem to be breaking any regulations, they just have a lot of money and the local media companies want some of it. that's not a fine.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > they don't seem to be breaking any regulations, they just have a lot of money and the local media companies want some of it. That's a great way to get a law passed ;) I'm not saying that I believe the Australian government has a legitimate case or anything, just that between "Google can do whatever it likes" and "all of Google's websites are blocked at ISP levels", there are a few levels of escalation that they can pick.
  - dodobirdlord 6y ago
    True, but the escalation goes in both directions. Google and Facebook are American companies, Australia and the US have existing free-trade agreements. Imposing fines on foreign businesses to force them to roll over for the benefit of local businesses is exactly the sort of thing that free-trade agreements forbid in no unclear terms. There are a lot of factors at play. Trump dislikes Google because the conservative hive mind has turned against it, but favors Facebook because it's supposedly essential to his campaign operations. Plus he's got a protectionist bent and loves trade sanctions.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      I doubt that anything will happen, really. It's a negotiation, the Australian government says "give us all your money", Google says "you're not getting one cent" and in the end Google will favor traditional media companies' sites a bit more ("fighting fake news with real information"), donate to a few journalism programs and possibly start creator-ad-share on news.
- blondin 6y ago
  feel like we discussed this here before and it was a different country (france?) so the issues is using content in google news or in snippets shown in google search results. i commented before that i seldom leave news or the main search anymore because of these snippets. why isn't it fair that the ads revenue is shared with these news publishers if their content is taken?
qtplatypus 6y ago
Google has office space and server farms in Australia. Also Australia has treaties with the us that allow the Australian government to fine US corporations.

ta1771 6y ago

Forget which country it is, but there's already another that's pushing this on Google (for their News aggregator).

panda88888 6y ago
France?
- blarglechien 6y ago
  correct, It was France. Last week

friendlybus 6y ago

The Aussie government’s dilemma is to avoid having to build their own services to fill a US tech gap. Politicians have stated they would prefer not to build their own services from the ground up. I think there’s an element of Australian politics that would push for homegrown stuff over google/fb.

joncrane 6y ago
No one HAS to build those services. The services Google and FB provide are 100% nonessential to successful society. Correct me if I'm wrong, but alternatives already exist for both.
- Bnshsysjab 6y ago
  most Australian news outlets are 100% non essential click bait trash, too.
  - 0xy 6y ago
    I'd say all of them, particularly the state media which have journalistic policies that allow them to skirt the issuing of retractions for months (ABC) or not at all (SBS). At least the private sector media will retract and correct in a reasonable period of time, in my experience both Fairfax and News Corp, although they're also generally rags at this point.
    - Bnshsysjab 6y ago
      Interesting point, do you have any examples? I’m generally left swinging but find the general style used by sbs and abc are generally less click baity and manipulative but are at times pretty left swinging themselves. Context: left = progressive, right = conservative. I think those terms switch in some countries so figured id mention.
      - 0xy 6y ago
        After requesting a retraction for some false news on SBS' website, I was informed after a very lengthy delay that they did not issue retractions to articles unless there is a complaint received within an arbitrary period of time. There's that, then there's the fact ACMA has zero oversight over SBS' online operations because they can only regulate their television content. For the ABC, on two separate occasions I reported some pretty egregious incorrect reporting and both times retractions occurred over a month later. Contrast this to the retractions I've gotten from the private sector. A reporter on a News Corp website replied to my email in under 10 minutes (!!) and issued a retraction. A reported for Fairfax similarly retracted a point in an article the following day after a complaint. So, the contrast is stark and revealing. ABC and SBS will lie to you with impunity and zero oversight, while the private sector at least has the decency to correct themselves in a reasonable period of time.

jariel 6y ago

It would be crazy for G/FB to play that kind of hardball. For Google, it would be an existential and permanent loss of business. Imagine if you woke up and G was not available in your country? You switch to an alternative: Bing, DDG etc.. Alternatives that many Aussies may not have really been aware of. And now, 100% of G's user base is being 'conditioned' on competitors' products - their default behavior, the icons they click, the default search engine for browsers changing over. And for most people - DDG/Bing is probably just as good as Google. A month later, G comes back to Australia, how many people bother to switch back? How many people have come to 'be fine' with something else? How many people resent G? Does the Aussie Gov, which will realize that 'search' is an essential aspect of operating ability, will even allow government workers to use a service from someone who will drop it instantly, and sign a service contract with Bing? Corporations who see it as an existential flaw and require everyone to have 3 search solutions 'at the ready'. For FB obviously it's a different story, however, a smart politician would paint FB as a 'foreign enemy' and turn the tide of populism against them as well. Because Aussie didn't 'ban' them, FB/G pulled out themselves, denying people their service, most people would 'blame them'. FB has some seemingly essential aspects in terms of communication, but I think that people would soon discover that it's not essential at all. It would be a disaster for both of them. The other risk is that this disaster becomes contagious. If G 'shuts down' in Australia - what does the UK government do? The EU gov? If they are smart they react with legislation forcing more 'choice' in search on every level.

thanhhaimai 6y ago
This has the assumption that Bing/DDG won't be forced out due to the same law. Would you mind clarifying why that would be true?
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  This doesn't seem implausible to me, based on the different competitive positions that Google and Bing hold. I can imagine a scenario in which Google doesn't want to pay this tax to avoid a ripple effect across their business in other countries, while Bing opportunistically decides that paying protection money is worth establishing a foothold as the primary search engine in a developed, Anglophone country.

throwaway483284 6y ago

There would be no political suicide there. It's so easy to make Google/Facebook look evil in this case if they don't comply. Just say they are not paying taxes and getting our money abroad etc. But there is 0% chance of Google/Facebook not complying. > I think Google and Facebook have more power in this relationship Not even close.

Mirioron 6y ago
In the long term the issue with this is that it pushes Google and Facebook into your politics. If you use political measures to screw with them, then they'll start getting involved in the politics more and more to protect themselves. And these two companies could have a lot of influence in ways that are hard to notice.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- speedgoose 6y ago
  It sounds threatening and I hope you don't work for them but anyway, Google and Facebook are already pushing hard into politics.
  - Mirioron 6y ago
    I do not work for them. This is something I noticed over the years: as Google ran into more and more obstacles in the US that are political the more they seem to have started to meddle. Maybe it's because this is easier, but maybe it's to protect themselves. These companies don't push themselves into politics everywhere (yet), but I'm sure that the more governments squeeze them the more they'll get involved.
    - Nasrudith 6y ago
      I cynically thought that was corruption by design, politicians - trying to get them into a 'contribute to both sides so they shut up' with shakedowns. They were trying to cast Google as sexist well before anything else happened to harm their image.

Barrin92 6y ago

>interesting to see what happens if they start pushing back. Nothing. Google isn't going to forego the entire Australian market or even an economy as large as the Eurozone. They'd just pay their x% tax and suck it up and consider it cost of doing business. Google is a company, not a nation state and governments ought to stop kowtowing in front of companies. Reminds me of the story about the elephants and the rope

rasz 6y ago
GM and Ford had no problem extracting itself from Australia, I see no barriers for Google and FB to do the same.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  car manufacturers leave expensive countries because there's an opportunity cost. If they can move their infrastructure from Australia to Thailand they make more money. Google already is everywhere. When they leave a country they just lose money. The marginal cost of production for large tech companies is close to zero so leaving a market virtually never makes any sense. Which is of course why all of the tech companies would personally grovel in front of the CCP if they let them in regardless under which conditions.
- tmh88j 6y ago
  >GM and Ford had no problem extracting itself from Australia, The only thing they extracted were their manufacturing operations, GM and Ford still sell vehicles in Australia. They even have the Focus which Ford dropped for the American market! Unless Google and Facebook are going to close their offices but still provide service to Australia, that seems like an entirely different scenario.
  - postingawayonhn 6y ago
    GM will effectively end sales once they wind down the Holden brand over the next year.

KarlKemp 6y ago

Funny how this suggestion comes up every time Google or Facebook are subject of some minor regulation outside the US. Yet suggest they should give up their participation in military or US border security, two areas that are unlikely to be larger than their business in Australia (or, other times, the EU), and there’s no shortage of people explaining what a stupid trade-off that would be. I guess the tech crowds’ priorities are clear: drone targeting? So what? This is strictly business! A bit of taxation to maybe rescue the journalism a democracy depends on? To the barricades! We will gladly give up 100% of earnings to take a stand against the injustice that is...taking 5% of earnings.

remarkEon 6y ago
"democracy", broadly defined, does not "depend" on journalism. This narrative seems to have been invented recently as traditional outlets lost the trust of their viewers after getting things continually and fantastically wrong for at least 2 decades while a new medium (the internet) exposed how little they actually know.
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  I'm slightly more bullish on journalism and its importance than you are, but I broadly agree. It's been embarrassing watching the death throes (or transition period) of journalism, seeing people used to being treated as high-status pathetically lash out at every possible entity involved in exposing their inadequacy. I do think that journalism plays a role in a healthy democracy. I assume that at some point, journalism will settle into a new equilibrium and play the role that it's always played, without the messianic complex that journalism as a whole is currently afflicted with (and so dramatically fails to live up to).
- chillacy 6y ago
  Democracy definitely depends on citizens being informed enough to collectively make intelligent choices, but whether infotainment is serving that right now is debatable. In real life that happens through peer networks as much as the news.
- uniqueid 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

kerng 6y ago

Its going to be the new norm and megacorporations have to share some of there wealth. Slowly countries and laws are catching up.

notatoad 6y ago
there's already a way for megacorps to have to share some of their wealth - it's called taxes and subsidies, and it's a well-established system. what australia, france, spain, and anybody else who is trying to enforce revenue transfers from facebook and google to their local media companies is trying to do is called a state-funded media, but that's apparently a bad look. so instead of collecting taxes and then distributing that tax revenue to the companies they want to subsidize, they're trying to pretend this is still some sort of free-market, independently funded media. a newspaper that's staying afloat because of government-mandated payments from big tech companies isn't any more independent than one being funded directly by the state.
- kirrent 6y ago
  You might as well say "what any government who is trying to enforce revenue transfers from spotify and youtube to their local musicians is trying to do is called a state-funded music". "What anybody who is trying to enforce revenue transfers from cinemas to local movie studios is trying to do is called a state funded film industry". "What any government who is trying to enforce revenue transfers from carbon emitting power generators to renewable generators in the form of a carbon credit is trying to do is called a state funded clean energy system." Oftentimes governments seek to redress one party whose work is being taken advantage of by another party whether that's from a principle of fairness, a desire to maintain the health of both parties, more mercenary reasons, etc. Doing this outside of the narrow regime of taxes and subsidies is not only not uncommon. It's entirely normal. Also, it's worth mentioning that the most trusted media organisation in Australia is state funded so it can't be that much of a bad look.

timwaagh 6y ago

Is it truly the only thing they could do? They could force phones to use different defaults. They could ban preinstallation of their apps. They could force preinstallation of competing apps. They could throttle them so their services get slow. They could force providers to show a large banner in addition to the site when showing it. They could I suppose add an additional tax on android phones to hurt Google, or even through the providers tax Facebook and Google usage until compliance. They could ban their apps and app stores. They could freeze bank accounts. They could send the army to destroy their hq. Banning their websites is merely the most sensible action in this situation.

roenxi 6y ago

Google isn't doing anything particularly special. I think banning them would be silly, but it isn't like they offer an irreplaceable or even particularly complicated set of services.

heavenlyblue 6y ago

>> I think Google and Facebook have more power in this relationship, which might say something about the tech giants. IMO decisions like that require power to be concentrated in limited hands.

dntbnmpls 6y ago

> What if Google and Facebook just said “No, thank you.”? We'll get anti-google/facebook/tech propaganda campaign like in the past. Remember the months/years of neverending anti-google "news"? Remember the months/years of neverending anti-facebook "news"? Followed by congressional hearings/etc. Notice how it all seemed to have stopped when google/youtube/facebook/etc decided to give state-backed "news" companies preferential treatment on their platforms? > I think Google and Facebook have more power in this relationship In purely business/financial terms, sure. But not in the media/political terms. You think these tech companies have more power than state backed news companies?