It's very possible that the math works out to be , but I disagree that the value of "disabling news searches in Australia" is tightly captured in a database. I

It's very possible that the math works out to be , but I disagree that the value of "disabling news searches in Australia" is tightly captured in a database. It's going to require some non-trivial modeling of the effect of removing news on the habits of Australian searchers, and how that may affect commercial queries: it's a very non-trivial part of most people's usage of Google. Some relevant things to consider: 1) The Australian market provides Google about ~$5B/yr in revenue, so a 20% revenue loss would be required 2) The global PR impact of disabling news searches, even in a local market 3) The future costs of setting the precedent of giving in to rent-seeking mafia tactics from a specific government; if they think it's likely to embolden other governments to do the same thing, it may be worth drawing a bright line despite the revenue costs