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Not indexing news content in order to avoid submitting to the proposed new law is itself prohibited under the new law.

by sjy 6y ago

LatteLazy 6y ago
Conspiracy theory time: that's what this is really about. Murdoch (Fox etc) know that they are next after Facebook gets done banning qanon nonsense. If Google audited the accuracy of Murdoch owned sources, it would have good reason to start delisting them. Murdoch knows he can't afford that. So this isn't about getting 1p per 1000 views or something. It's about being assured a high search result placement for his disinformation.
- cirno 6y ago
  Google delisting high-clickbait sources because their claims are blatantly false is something that would never happen.
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    Are you sure? They're all under pressure, even twitter which was basically the wild west has started adding "get the facts" links, Facebook just closed all those groups. "What are you doing about misinformation?" is a question execs might like to have an answer to...
lopis 6y ago
So Google will either pay up, or exit Australia long enough until the law gets overturned - whichever is cheaper. For massive companies like Google, presenting them with silly fines and taxes is like a truck finding a little speed bump.
- sjy 6y ago
  Google paid up when the competition regulators in the EU fined them €1.5bn, didn’t they?
  - squiggleblaz 6y ago
    Europe is a much bigger market than Australia. Many companies don't do business there.
  - mcv 6y ago
    That was a fine for breaking the rules, not an involuntary contract.
wombatmobile 6y ago
Link to the new legislation or description thereof?
- sjy 6y ago
  Concepts paper and draft legislation published by the ACCC: https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-media-bargaining-code https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m... HN discussed this when the draft legislation was published: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24006150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24006150
  - thu2111 6y ago
    This law is the latest iteration of newspaper's attempts to turn Google into an ATM for the industry. The first attempt was in Germany. The law said search engines must pay newspapers to index their content. However it didn't specify what the price should be, so Google simply negotiated a fee of zero and the law was in effect nullified. The second attempt was in Spain. It is the same law, but this time they added a clause that said the fee can't be zero. So Google News was shut down in Spain and the law was in effect nullified again. The third attempt is in EU and Australia. In Australia it's the same law, but this time it says the fees both cannot be zero and that you aren't allowed to shut down your service. In the EU the assumption is Google can't pull out, so if a Spain-style law is passed at the Commission level then Google have to pay up. What comes next? My guess - either this is the point where Google breaks or they pull out of Australia completely. They did it on principle for China, once, and that was a drastically larger market. But it's not the same company it once was. It may be that Google/FB just decide indexing news isn't worth it. Bing can serve loss-making news queries. Or someone would set up a news-focused search engine in the USA that doesn't have any legal presence anywhere else. Indexing news is a much more tractable problem than indexing the entire web especially with advances in AI-driven NLP. However, there's the question of how to get people to pay for it. edit: apparently the law is a bill of attainder and names who it applies to specifically, note these laws are unconstitutional in the USA (at least theoretically).
    - 6y ago
catmanjan 6y ago
That is utterly false The Australian government isn't forcing Google to index content, and I suspect what op suggested is what will happen and News corp will beg for reindexing
- 3131s 6y ago
  I don't get it... if News Corp doesn't want to be indexed can't they just set their robots.txt accordingly? It doesn't seem like they'll be able to successfully argue this.
  - brainwad 6y ago
    What this law gives them is a way to force all their competitors (e.g. Fairfax) to join their boycott, by being able to negotatiate a single, mandatory price for the industry that their competitors won't be allowed to undercut.
  - Strom 6y ago
    I'll just note that robots.txt does not affect indexing. It is used for traffic management and will not hide pages from Google. [1] -- [1] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608?hl=en

Not indexing news content in order to avoid submitting to the proposed new law is itself prohibited under the new law.

by sjy 6y ago

Not indexing news content in order to avoid submitting to the proposed new law is itself prohibited under the new law.

Conspiracy theory time: that's what this is really about. Murdoch (Fox etc) know that they are next after Facebook gets done banning qanon nonsense. If Google audited the accuracy of Murdoch owned sources, it would have good reason to start delisting them. Murdoch knows he can't afford that. So this isn't about getting 1p per 1000 views or something. It's about being assured a high search result placement for his disinformation.

cirno 6y ago
Google delisting high-clickbait sources because their claims are blatantly false is something that would never happen.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  Are you sure? They're all under pressure, even twitter which was basically the wild west has started adding "get the facts" links, Facebook just closed all those groups. "What are you doing about misinformation?" is a question execs might like to have an answer to...

lopis 6y ago

So Google will either pay up, or exit Australia long enough until the law gets overturned - whichever is cheaper. For massive companies like Google, presenting them with silly fines and taxes is like a truck finding a little speed bump.

sjy 6y ago
Google paid up when the competition regulators in the EU fined them €1.5bn, didn’t they?
- squiggleblaz 6y ago
  Europe is a much bigger market than Australia. Many companies don't do business there.
- mcv 6y ago
  That was a fine for breaking the rules, not an involuntary contract.

wombatmobile 6y ago

Link to the new legislation or description thereof?

sjy 6y ago
Concepts paper and draft legislation published by the ACCC: https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-media-bargaining-code https://www.accc.gov.au/focus-areas/digital-platforms/news-m... HN discussed this when the draft legislation was published: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24006150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24006150
- thu2111 6y ago
  This law is the latest iteration of newspaper's attempts to turn Google into an ATM for the industry. The first attempt was in Germany. The law said search engines must pay newspapers to index their content. However it didn't specify what the price should be, so Google simply negotiated a fee of zero and the law was in effect nullified. The second attempt was in Spain. It is the same law, but this time they added a clause that said the fee can't be zero. So Google News was shut down in Spain and the law was in effect nullified again. The third attempt is in EU and Australia. In Australia it's the same law, but this time it says the fees both cannot be zero and that you aren't allowed to shut down your service. In the EU the assumption is Google can't pull out, so if a Spain-style law is passed at the Commission level then Google have to pay up. What comes next? My guess - either this is the point where Google breaks or they pull out of Australia completely. They did it on principle for China, once, and that was a drastically larger market. But it's not the same company it once was. It may be that Google/FB just decide indexing news isn't worth it. Bing can serve loss-making news queries. Or someone would set up a news-focused search engine in the USA that doesn't have any legal presence anywhere else. Indexing news is a much more tractable problem than indexing the entire web especially with advances in AI-driven NLP. However, there's the question of how to get people to pay for it. edit: apparently the law is a bill of attainder and names who it applies to specifically, note these laws are unconstitutional in the USA (at least theoretically).
  - 6y ago

catmanjan 6y ago

That is utterly false The Australian government isn't forcing Google to index content, and I suspect what op suggested is what will happen and News corp will beg for reindexing

3131s 6y ago
I don't get it... if News Corp doesn't want to be indexed can't they just set their robots.txt accordingly? It doesn't seem like they'll be able to successfully argue this.
- brainwad 6y ago
  What this law gives them is a way to force all their competitors (e.g. Fairfax) to join their boycott, by being able to negotatiate a single, mandatory price for the industry that their competitors won't be allowed to undercut.
- Strom 6y ago
  I'll just note that robots.txt does not affect indexing. It is used for traffic management and will not hide pages from Google. [1] -- [1] https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608?hl=en https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062608?hl=en