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Google’s PR on this whole thing is a mess. There’s no explanation of how this fits in to their previous ads and videos that threatened to pull search from Austr

by nojs 6y ago

Google’s PR on this whole thing is a mess. There’s no explanation of how this fits in to their previous ads and videos that threatened to pull search from Australia. And even that was badly explained. I wish they would pick a stance and clearly say what they mean.

jb_s 6y ago
There's also no link to the bloody thing anywhere! Great launch.
- wbercx 6y ago
  Even a Google search for it doesn't bring it up. Plenty of fanfare about the launch, but no actual product. Already lost interest.
22c 6y ago
Google threatening to pull search from Australia was the most obvious bluff I've ever seen from any company. A total embarrassment, everyone saw right through it.
- jiggawatts 6y ago
  If they actually did something like that, they could kiss their GCP, Google Docs, etc... contracts goodbye. Especially with government customers. They'd lose an entire country not just for search, but just about every other service they offer.
  - catmanjan 6y ago
    >GCP, Google Docs, etc... contracts goodbye. Especially with government customers They've already done that, Google's market share in government is approaching zero. They just aren't a B2B company, unlike Microsoft
    - mr_toad 6y ago
      Government procurement processes are allergic to buying products. They insist on purchasing solutions.
      - catmanjan 6y ago
        That's fair enough though isn't it? Products are for people, organisations want solutions
        mr_toad 6y ago
        You’re not wrong, even when the people working in the organisation just want a product.
  - jimmydorry 6y ago
    From what I understand of the law, they wouldn't be able to offer those services anyway. The law essentially boils down to: "The following services (Google and Facebook for now) must pay per hyperlink for anything newsworthy."
- nl 6y ago
  It's not a bluff. They'd just redirect users to the google.com site. So they'd keep roughly the same revenue, just remove the Australian operations.
ehnto 6y ago
I wish they could handle this like a professional company and not drag their users into the argument. They really tried their best to leverage their platform to threaten their users into being worried enough to petition.
rstuart4133 6y ago
> There’s no explanation of how this fits in to their previous ads and videos that threatened to pull search from Australia. That's because the threat to pull search from Australia was just bluff and bullshit. Amazingly it worked - I've had a number of people come up to me in panic they would lose access to ad words (that was a business owner), their pictures, their contacts, and gmail. Turns out bluff and bullshit is all you need to make ScoMo from marketing (Australian's moniker for their current prime minister) do a 180. That's politics, I guess. To be fair, if though losing access to those Goole services was a real possibility I'd be in a panic too. But it was never going to happen. As far as I know, the servers that handle all of those things aren't based in Australia now. All Google have to do is remove their legal presence out of reach of the Australian government. Unless the government resorted to some great firewall of china style thing, all of those things would continue to work, and the revenue streams they generated would be unaffected. The only change is no local people on the ground, no GST, and no paying the piddling amount of corporate tax they deign to give us. > I wish they would pick a stance and clearly say what they mean. Oh, they picked a stance long ago, and they haven't moved since. 6 months ago Google said they would pay for some news [0], before the draft code was first published. I don't think sharing revenue from a news.google.com.au or whatever it is going to be called now was ever a major issue for them. Their stance is about a different line in the sand. The newspapers have asked their politician mates, the LNP, to pass a law to force Google to give them money from their search engine business. Just how badly on the nose this is is not obvious because another piece of bullshit, this time finely finessed by ScoMo himself, is they've come up with some definition of a "digital platform" that somehow captures Google. They didn't. They can't make some general rule like "if you link to someone you have to pay them" - because it's farcical, capturing every web site out there. They can't claim Google primarily makes their ad revenue from newspaper links, because they are a tiny fraction of the results returned by most searches. They can't claim Google is stealing stuff because Google respects robots.txt so the newspapers can turn off Google search indexing at any time if they so wish, and they can't use copyright because the 1 or 2 sentences Google quotes are fair use. So in the draft legislation they don't devote a lot of words defining what a "digital platform" is and then leave the decision of which companies fit that definition to a Judge. In a fine act of obfuscation they do have lots of words defining a "digital platform" - but the companies who have to pay the newspapers are listed by name in a schedule that is at the sole discretion of the minister, and the legislation specifically bans legal challenges to his decision making all those words irrelevant. It is the most blatant exhibition of crony capitalism I've seen in a while. Google has drawn a line in the sand at "you can force us to pay for links that you say in robots.txt we can index, and are publicly available for free to everyone else". That has not changed, and I'm guessing they would either stop indexing newspapers or remove their legal presence from Australia before they’d let the newspapers put their snouts into the search ad revenue stream. All they've done here is say "we will build a better site than news.google.com.au, dedicated to news, and share ad revenue that it attracts". If you think this site will do any better than G+, then I've got a bridge to sell you. Rupert Murdock is not known for buying bridges, so if they government accepts this it will acceptance of total defeat from him. Sadly, for Rupert ScoMo from marketing is making conciliatory noises. I think it's finally dawned just how strong Google’s "we will just remove our legal presence" option made their position. Google does have a reasonable presence in Australia (maps.google.com is was an Australian company they purchased, and development is still done here), so moving would be a pain, but it would have stuff all effect on the one thing that really matters - their revenue from Australia. ScoMo is just waking up to the fact he's been played for a moron by Rupert, again, just as Trump did before him, and this offer is at most is a face saving fig from Google. I hope he's grateful they gave him one. [0] https://www.news.com.au/technology/e5abf473f1091188f78d775893c535f8 https://www.news.com.au/technology/e5abf473f1091188f78d77589...

by nojs 6y ago

jb_s 6y ago

There's also no link to the bloody thing anywhere! Great launch.

wbercx 6y ago
Even a Google search for it doesn't bring it up. Plenty of fanfare about the launch, but no actual product. Already lost interest.

22c 6y ago

Google threatening to pull search from Australia was the most obvious bluff I've ever seen from any company. A total embarrassment, everyone saw right through it.

jiggawatts 6y ago
If they actually did something like that, they could kiss their GCP, Google Docs, etc... contracts goodbye. Especially with government customers. They'd lose an entire country not just for search, but just about every other service they offer.
- catmanjan 6y ago
  >GCP, Google Docs, etc... contracts goodbye. Especially with government customers They've already done that, Google's market share in government is approaching zero. They just aren't a B2B company, unlike Microsoft
  - mr_toad 6y ago
    Government procurement processes are allergic to buying products. They insist on purchasing solutions.
    - catmanjan 6y ago
      That's fair enough though isn't it? Products are for people, organisations want solutions
      - mr_toad 6y ago
        You’re not wrong, even when the people working in the organisation just want a product.
- jimmydorry 6y ago
  From what I understand of the law, they wouldn't be able to offer those services anyway. The law essentially boils down to: "The following services (Google and Facebook for now) must pay per hyperlink for anything newsworthy."
nl 6y ago
It's not a bluff. They'd just redirect users to the google.com site. So they'd keep roughly the same revenue, just remove the Australian operations.

ehnto 6y ago

I wish they could handle this like a professional company and not drag their users into the argument. They really tried their best to leverage their platform to threaten their users into being worried enough to petition.

rstuart4133 6y ago

> There’s no explanation of how this fits in to their previous ads and videos that threatened to pull search from Australia. That's because the threat to pull search from Australia was just bluff and bullshit. Amazingly it worked - I've had a number of people come up to me in panic they would lose access to ad words (that was a business owner), their pictures, their contacts, and gmail. Turns out bluff and bullshit is all you need to make ScoMo from marketing (Australian's moniker for their current prime minister) do a 180. That's politics, I guess. To be fair, if though losing access to those Goole services was a real possibility I'd be in a panic too. But it was never going to happen. As far as I know, the servers that handle all of those things aren't based in Australia now. All Google have to do is remove their legal presence out of reach of the Australian government. Unless the government resorted to some great firewall of china style thing, all of those things would continue to work, and the revenue streams they generated would be unaffected. The only change is no local people on the ground, no GST, and no paying the piddling amount of corporate tax they deign to give us. > I wish they would pick a stance and clearly say what they mean. Oh, they picked a stance long ago, and they haven't moved since. 6 months ago Google said they would pay for some news [0], before the draft code was first published. I don't think sharing revenue from a news.google.com.au or whatever it is going to be called now was ever a major issue for them. Their stance is about a different line in the sand. The newspapers have asked their politician mates, the LNP, to pass a law to force Google to give them money from their search engine business. Just how badly on the nose this is is not obvious because another piece of bullshit, this time finely finessed by ScoMo himself, is they've come up with some definition of a "digital platform" that somehow captures Google. They didn't. They can't make some general rule like "if you link to someone you have to pay them" - because it's farcical, capturing every web site out there. They can't claim Google primarily makes their ad revenue from newspaper links, because they are a tiny fraction of the results returned by most searches. They can't claim Google is stealing stuff because Google respects robots.txt so the newspapers can turn off Google search indexing at any time if they so wish, and they can't use copyright because the 1 or 2 sentences Google quotes are fair use. So in the draft legislation they don't devote a lot of words defining what a "digital platform" is and then leave the decision of which companies fit that definition to a Judge. In a fine act of obfuscation they do have lots of words defining a "digital platform" - but the companies who have to pay the newspapers are listed by name in a schedule that is at the sole discretion of the minister, and the legislation specifically bans legal challenges to his decision making all those words irrelevant. It is the most blatant exhibition of crony capitalism I've seen in a while. Google has drawn a line in the sand at "you can force us to pay for links that you say in robots.txt we can index, and are publicly available for free to everyone else". That has not changed, and I'm guessing they would either stop indexing newspapers or remove their legal presence from Australia before they’d let the newspapers put their snouts into the search ad revenue stream. All they've done here is say "we will build a better site than news.google.com.au, dedicated to news, and share ad revenue that it attracts". If you think this site will do any better than G+, then I've got a bridge to sell you. Rupert Murdock is not known for buying bridges, so if they government accepts this it will acceptance of total defeat from him. Sadly, for Rupert ScoMo from marketing is making conciliatory noises. I think it's finally dawned just how strong Google’s "we will just remove our legal presence" option made their position. Google does have a reasonable presence in Australia (maps.google.com is was an Australian company they purchased, and development is still done here), so moving would be a pain, but it would have stuff all effect on the one thing that really matters - their revenue from Australia. ScoMo is just waking up to the fact he's been played for a moron by Rupert, again, just as Trump did before him, and this offer is at most is a face saving fig from Google. I hope he's grateful they gave him one. [0] https://www.news.com.au/technology/e5abf473f1091188f78d775893c535f8 https://www.news.com.au/technology/e5abf473f1091188f78d77589...