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The legislation is absolute trash, but Google's response as been absolutely abysmal. They spent multiple days inserting unremovable yellow banners on top of ev

The legislation is absolute trash, but Google's response as been absolutely abysmal. They spent multiple days inserting unremovable yellow banners on top of every search results page for every Australian that directed everyone to YouTube. Their spokesperson spoke to users like they were kindergarten children; their literal argument was that the legislation would be "like if you had to pay to tell your friends about a new coffee shop"[1]. They also started running "tests" where they would silently blackhole Australian news sites for a subset of users. They simply pretended that ABC.net.au didn't exist, even though 90% of the content on that site is not news. I don't know what their PR team were thinking, but they've successfully demonstrated that they both have too much power and neither respect nor care about their end users. [1] https://youtu.be/dHypeuHePEI?t=56s https://youtu.be/dHypeuHePEI?t=56s

geogra4 6y ago
>they've successfully demonstrated that they both have too much power and don't give a shit about their end users. This is the fundamental problem with Google, period.
- fakedang 6y ago
  Strictly my opinion but I can't help thinking that current Google leadership seems way more incompetent than the Ballmer decade at MSFT. At least Ballmer can attribute his incompetence to being overly cautious after the antitrust case. On a tangential note, honest question to people here. If Microsoft was fined for bundling the Internet Explorer browser along with Windows in 1997, why is it that I can't remove Chrome from Android or Safari from iOS or Edge from Windows today? I'm largely stranger to US antitrust laws.
  - eric-hu 6y ago
    Probably has to do with Windows market share being far bigger in the 90’s.
  - docdeek 6y ago
    Not sure about Chrome and Android, but iOS global market share is still very low (15%). In my country it is higher (about a third of the market) but nowhere near the market share of Windows in the 1990s. IANAL but this could be part of it.
    - fakedang 6y ago
      iOS on phone is 50%+ market share in the US. I thought the US antitrust laws cared primarily about US consumers, or am I mistaken? Still doesn't explain why Edge is bundled with Windows and why I can't uninstall it from my PC without going to the system files.
      - freddie_mercury 6y ago
        I'm not sure how you think it works. Do you think there's some kind of Supreme Court precedent making it illegal for OS vendors to bundle software? Microsoft didn't lose the antitrust case. It was overturned on appeal, remanded to a lower court to try again, and then the government settled out of court. From the Wikipedia description of the settlement: "the DOJ did not require Microsoft to change any of its code nor prevent Microsoft from tying other software with Windows in the future". What's more "Microsoft’s obligations under the settlement, as originally drafted, expired on November 12, 2007." Given all of that why wouldn't Edge be bundled?
        fakedang 6y ago
        Ah thanks, that explains a lot. I did actually think that case set the precedent that way, since MSFT was totally defanged by then upstarts over the next decade.
    - Dma54rhs 6y ago
      Anti trust brought by US was about protecting American consumers, so world has a little to do with it. Apple with his pricing alone could always keep 50% of the world out, thankfully it doesn't work like that.
  - waterhouse 6y ago
    > At least Ballmer can attribute his incompetence to being overly cautious after the antitrust case. Theoretically, anticipating an antitrust case might lead you to be equally cautious, in roughly the same way, as having recently gotten an antitrust case. Though things that "demonstrated that they ... have too much power" sound like some of the worst things you could do if you were anticipating an antitrust case.
    - jfoster 6y ago
      Isn't this mixing things up a bit? This issue relates to their dealings in Australia, whilst any antitrust case is most likely to come from US or EU and be focused on those markets, isn't it?
      - sjy 6y ago
        This legislation is supposed to be a kind of antitrust (ie. competition law) regulation. It came out of an inquiry by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The stated purpose of the law is to remedy a 'bargaining power imbalance between digital platforms and news media businesses': https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/ems/r6652_ems_2fe103c0-0f60-480b-b878-1c8e96cf51d2/upload_pdf/JC000725.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/em...
  - the_duke 6y ago
    It's not so much incompetence as (maybe misguided) confidence. Google and other big IT corpos seem to be operating under the assumption that government action is harmless. At most they get a moderate fine, which they can delay in courts for years, and then keep operating with minor alterations. This won't change until there is actual legislation or they are threatened with being broken.
  - hsbauauvhabzb 6y ago
    I’m more concerned about tightly bound integration. Why can’t Siri default to google maps? Having a browser engine in an OS makes sense from a third party developer point of view - if I want my app to run on all windows/Mac/iOS/android/whatever systems without bundling WebKit, having a browser libs guaranteed to be on $target is really helpful.
  - fogihujy 6y ago
    It's quite possible for me to remove remove Edge from my Windows install. It might not remove individual components like the browser engine, but Edge itself won't be available. Android/iOS is a different beast, as they both have decent shares of the market; if you don't like Safari being bundled with iOS you can always buy an Android phone. That seems to be the reasoning behind it anyway. Mind you, Windows has a smaller market share of the personal computing market today, compared to when the anti-trust cases were settled. I suspect that with Apple's currently higher market share and the fact that browsers are available on phones, pads and other devices, those settlements would have ended up differently.
- loceng 6y ago
  You only give them power by using them. Create a competitor. Barriers to entry? Figure out how to dismantle or deal with those barriers. Too lazy or don't know/understand how and just want legislation, control, towards tyrannical systems - then yeah, lobby your government to stifle innovation; most governments already stifle innovation - patents arguably being the largest problem here, in bed with the legal-lawyer industrial complex. This learned helplessness that society feels trapped in really is a problem; thanks to Eric Weinstein for adding that lens as a tool to understand current conversations through as well. Use DuckDuckGo search or other, gift them money so they can improve their search - or fund another startup who's working on the problem etc. Plenty of options. Edit to add: I see at least 2 people have continued to choose the lazy option.
  - ant6n 6y ago
    Wait, so your response to the concern that Google has too much power is just invest a couple hundred million to create a competitor, otherwise you’re just lazy. I’m not sure that’s a strategy open to many people. Using laws created by democratic processes to reduce power of a Single corp seems more viable.
    - roenxi 6y ago
      Laws created by the democratic process generally require a majority of the population or very powerful sponsors. Either of which is a group of people more than capable of starting their own business. Winning an election requires the support of exceptional people.
  - bulleyashah 6y ago
    Hmm. Don't like your planet? Terraform a new planet. Don't like End of Universe? Create your own big bang. What do you mean it's impossible? Stop this learned helplessness.
    - loceng 6y ago
      Exaggeration are pretty weak counter argument points.
- Mauricebranagh 6y ago
  I think you mean a large proportion of the newspapers here, even "Liberal" papers like the Guardian do this.
nojs 6y ago
Yeah, the video was shocker. It’s amazing that a company as powerful as Google can be so hopeless at PR, and it’s a shame in this case because I think they are in the right.
ck425 6y ago
I agree with you that they've handled badly but I don't know how they should have handled it. Anyone got ideas on how they should have handled it?
- snickms 6y ago
  They should have explained that copyright belongs to every author and singling out one industry as being worthy of compensation works against the spirit of the treaty. They could then explain how their content uses excerpts of copyrighted material to direct the curious to the source. It should have then asked for legislation on what constitutes fair use in this context. If the government insisted on fees, then they should have asked them why news businesses are more worthy of those fees than individuals.
snickms 6y ago
Quite a few people here think that this legislation exists solely to prop up various News Corp outlets. https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/11/26/coalition-news-corp-funding/ https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/11/26/coalition-news-corp-fun...
- ra 6y ago
  it's no secret that News corp is cosy with political sides that support their interests... and News is so influential, that it's become symbiotic.
  - josephg 6y ago
    It would be hilarious if the upshot of this is Murdoch press (sky news, etc) all ending up banned from Facebook and Google news.
- wp381640 6y ago
  When Murdoch cries poor in Australia just remember that he spun out what newspapers traditionally made money on - the real estate ad business - into a separate company, REA (realestate.com.au), and today it's worth $20B REA still makes up about 80% of news corps value. When they talk about news being a bad loss-making business, they're talking about the newspapers that are subsidised by their online revenue and used to control politics in three major large democracies (yes, three - I count Australia!)
  - snickms 6y ago
    > ...used to control politics in three major large democracies Five eyes my foot. As you have noted, three of them appear to be completely blind. If they cannot protect us from this, then what are they there for?
faitswulff 6y ago
> Their spokesperson spoke to users like they were kindergarten children This would probably be effective in America: "Trump speaks at level of 8-year-old, new analysis finds" [0] [0]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-language-level-speaking-skills-age-eight-year-old-vocabulary-analysis-a8149926.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
hsbauauvhabzb 6y ago
You forgot threatening to withdraw from Australia as it would ‘no longer be viable’. Laughable to think that google news would be even 1% of their total income for the country.
- graeme 6y ago
  They were threatening to withdraw because the law requires google to give news orgs advance notice of any algo changes. That utterly breaks google’s anti spam efforts. They discuss it here: https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-asia/australia/news-code-path-forward/amp/ https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-asia/australia/n...
  - throwaway2245 6y ago
    This page doesn't contain the word 'spam' - is that actually Google's claim, or are you inferring it?
    - graeme 6y ago
      I’m inferring it because it’s basic knowledge that search engines use algorithms to show good stuff and avoid spam. There’s a whole seo industry dedicated to gaming the engines. Inference almost feels like too big a word there. Anti-spam is fundamental to what search algos do. The point of the link is google says this: >“ While we recognise that the Government has made tweaks to this provision, it’s still not feasible for Google or consistent with our ability to offer quality services. We make thousands of algorithm updates every year, so providing 14 days’ notice of any significant changes to algorithms or “internal practices” in the way the Code prescribes just isn’t workable. This provision also continues to put every other business that relies on Google Search at a disadvantage, all to benefit one group of businesses—news publishers.” They’d prefer not to say “we’d be overrun with spam if we made this change” but it’s part of why it would be unworkable. The tweaks google makes are part of the cat and mouse game with spammers and gamers.
      - throwaway2245 6y ago
graeme 6y ago
> be "like if you had to pay to tell your friends about a new coffee shop"[1]. That is what the law does though. It only does it for google and facebook, and only for news, but it does exactly that. Not only that, but in the coffee shop example you must give a recommendation. You can’t decline to do so even though the govt really will send you a bill. You also have to give 14 day advance notice to coffee shops that you are going to change your recommendations. This also changes your recommendation cycle: if a coffeeshop starts serving bad coffee you have to wait 14 days to stop recommending them, and you’ll have to pay them every time you recommend them during that period. The bill is exactly that dumb. It can be hard to explain something is dumb without sounding condescending. Google probably could have done a better job. But....were you objecting to the coffee analogy because it’s wrong? It isn’t.
- mattmanser 6y ago
  Exactly what's "dumb" about this? You've got Google, who are now pretty much running the world high street as the quintessential evil rentier, providing little value while extracting virtually all the profits. They are constantly moving the goal posts, which can ruin businesses overnight, with no oversight. Now they have to tell businesses beforehand before they make them bankrupt, so the business at least has a chance to change. Does that sound less dumb and more reasonable if written that way?
  - username90 6y ago
    Remove Google and you'll likely see the open web slowly dying as the remaining big corps reduces its power and moves everything to walled gardens.
    - username90 6y ago
      To explain further, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple and Amazon would be happy if the open web died and people had to use apps instead. The only big player with self interest in ensuring the open web continues to exist and be a good user experience is Google.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
I don't understand how either of these actions show that Google has too much power. Putting a banner on their own website, and experimenting with complying with the legislation, seem like reasonable and measured steps in response to the challenges they face. I feel like any website facing this type of regulation would take similar steps, no matter how big or small. Can you explain?
- underwater 6y ago
  Making the banner non-dismissable, not indicating there are missing results, and experimenting on individuals by degrading their experience unnecessarily are not things you do when you respect your users. If Google is going to pretend it's a neutral, benign, entity they should at least try to pretend they care about us.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
    I asked how those behaviors show Google's power. You seem to be commenting about something else.
h_anna_h 6y ago
> you break the way search engines work, and you no longer have a free and open web. The hypocrisy...
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
They do not pay taxes in Australia but they use Australia's infrastructure to collect the data they need on Australians.

geogra4 6y ago

>they've successfully demonstrated that they both have too much power and don't give a shit about their end users. This is the fundamental problem with Google, period.

fakedang 6y ago
Strictly my opinion but I can't help thinking that current Google leadership seems way more incompetent than the Ballmer decade at MSFT. At least Ballmer can attribute his incompetence to being overly cautious after the antitrust case. On a tangential note, honest question to people here. If Microsoft was fined for bundling the Internet Explorer browser along with Windows in 1997, why is it that I can't remove Chrome from Android or Safari from iOS or Edge from Windows today? I'm largely stranger to US antitrust laws.
- eric-hu 6y ago
  Probably has to do with Windows market share being far bigger in the 90’s.
- docdeek 6y ago
  Not sure about Chrome and Android, but iOS global market share is still very low (15%). In my country it is higher (about a third of the market) but nowhere near the market share of Windows in the 1990s. IANAL but this could be part of it.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    iOS on phone is 50%+ market share in the US. I thought the US antitrust laws cared primarily about US consumers, or am I mistaken? Still doesn't explain why Edge is bundled with Windows and why I can't uninstall it from my PC without going to the system files.
    - freddie_mercury 6y ago
      I'm not sure how you think it works. Do you think there's some kind of Supreme Court precedent making it illegal for OS vendors to bundle software? Microsoft didn't lose the antitrust case. It was overturned on appeal, remanded to a lower court to try again, and then the government settled out of court. From the Wikipedia description of the settlement: "the DOJ did not require Microsoft to change any of its code nor prevent Microsoft from tying other software with Windows in the future". What's more "Microsoft’s obligations under the settlement, as originally drafted, expired on November 12, 2007." Given all of that why wouldn't Edge be bundled?
      - fakedang 6y ago
        Ah thanks, that explains a lot. I did actually think that case set the precedent that way, since MSFT was totally defanged by then upstarts over the next decade.
  - Dma54rhs 6y ago
    Anti trust brought by US was about protecting American consumers, so world has a little to do with it. Apple with his pricing alone could always keep 50% of the world out, thankfully it doesn't work like that.
- waterhouse 6y ago
  > At least Ballmer can attribute his incompetence to being overly cautious after the antitrust case. Theoretically, anticipating an antitrust case might lead you to be equally cautious, in roughly the same way, as having recently gotten an antitrust case. Though things that "demonstrated that they ... have too much power" sound like some of the worst things you could do if you were anticipating an antitrust case.
  - jfoster 6y ago
    Isn't this mixing things up a bit? This issue relates to their dealings in Australia, whilst any antitrust case is most likely to come from US or EU and be focused on those markets, isn't it?
    - sjy 6y ago
      This legislation is supposed to be a kind of antitrust (ie. competition law) regulation. It came out of an inquiry by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. The stated purpose of the law is to remedy a 'bargaining power imbalance between digital platforms and news media businesses': https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/ems/r6652_ems_2fe103c0-0f60-480b-b878-1c8e96cf51d2/upload_pdf/JC000725.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/em...
- the_duke 6y ago
  It's not so much incompetence as (maybe misguided) confidence. Google and other big IT corpos seem to be operating under the assumption that government action is harmless. At most they get a moderate fine, which they can delay in courts for years, and then keep operating with minor alterations. This won't change until there is actual legislation or they are threatened with being broken.
- hsbauauvhabzb 6y ago
  I’m more concerned about tightly bound integration. Why can’t Siri default to google maps? Having a browser engine in an OS makes sense from a third party developer point of view - if I want my app to run on all windows/Mac/iOS/android/whatever systems without bundling WebKit, having a browser libs guaranteed to be on $target is really helpful.
- fogihujy 6y ago
  It's quite possible for me to remove remove Edge from my Windows install. It might not remove individual components like the browser engine, but Edge itself won't be available. Android/iOS is a different beast, as they both have decent shares of the market; if you don't like Safari being bundled with iOS you can always buy an Android phone. That seems to be the reasoning behind it anyway. Mind you, Windows has a smaller market share of the personal computing market today, compared to when the anti-trust cases were settled. I suspect that with Apple's currently higher market share and the fact that browsers are available on phones, pads and other devices, those settlements would have ended up differently.
loceng 6y ago
You only give them power by using them. Create a competitor. Barriers to entry? Figure out how to dismantle or deal with those barriers. Too lazy or don't know/understand how and just want legislation, control, towards tyrannical systems - then yeah, lobby your government to stifle innovation; most governments already stifle innovation - patents arguably being the largest problem here, in bed with the legal-lawyer industrial complex. This learned helplessness that society feels trapped in really is a problem; thanks to Eric Weinstein for adding that lens as a tool to understand current conversations through as well. Use DuckDuckGo search or other, gift them money so they can improve their search - or fund another startup who's working on the problem etc. Plenty of options. Edit to add: I see at least 2 people have continued to choose the lazy option.
- ant6n 6y ago
  Wait, so your response to the concern that Google has too much power is just invest a couple hundred million to create a competitor, otherwise you’re just lazy. I’m not sure that’s a strategy open to many people. Using laws created by democratic processes to reduce power of a Single corp seems more viable.
  - roenxi 6y ago
    Laws created by the democratic process generally require a majority of the population or very powerful sponsors. Either of which is a group of people more than capable of starting their own business. Winning an election requires the support of exceptional people.
- bulleyashah 6y ago
  Hmm. Don't like your planet? Terraform a new planet. Don't like End of Universe? Create your own big bang. What do you mean it's impossible? Stop this learned helplessness.
  - loceng 6y ago
    Exaggeration are pretty weak counter argument points.
Mauricebranagh 6y ago
I think you mean a large proportion of the newspapers here, even "Liberal" papers like the Guardian do this.

nojs 6y ago

Yeah, the video was shocker. It’s amazing that a company as powerful as Google can be so hopeless at PR, and it’s a shame in this case because I think they are in the right.

ck425 6y ago

I agree with you that they've handled badly but I don't know how they should have handled it. Anyone got ideas on how they should have handled it?

snickms 6y ago
They should have explained that copyright belongs to every author and singling out one industry as being worthy of compensation works against the spirit of the treaty. They could then explain how their content uses excerpts of copyrighted material to direct the curious to the source. It should have then asked for legislation on what constitutes fair use in this context. If the government insisted on fees, then they should have asked them why news businesses are more worthy of those fees than individuals.

snickms 6y ago

Quite a few people here think that this legislation exists solely to prop up various News Corp outlets. https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/11/26/coalition-news-corp-funding/ https://www.crikey.com.au/2020/11/26/coalition-news-corp-fun...

ra 6y ago
it's no secret that News corp is cosy with political sides that support their interests... and News is so influential, that it's become symbiotic.
- josephg 6y ago
  It would be hilarious if the upshot of this is Murdoch press (sky news, etc) all ending up banned from Facebook and Google news.
wp381640 6y ago
When Murdoch cries poor in Australia just remember that he spun out what newspapers traditionally made money on - the real estate ad business - into a separate company, REA (realestate.com.au), and today it's worth $20B REA still makes up about 80% of news corps value. When they talk about news being a bad loss-making business, they're talking about the newspapers that are subsidised by their online revenue and used to control politics in three major large democracies (yes, three - I count Australia!)
- snickms 6y ago
  > ...used to control politics in three major large democracies Five eyes my foot. As you have noted, three of them appear to be completely blind. If they cannot protect us from this, then what are they there for?

faitswulff 6y ago

> Their spokesperson spoke to users like they were kindergarten children This would probably be effective in America: "Trump speaks at level of 8-year-old, new analysis finds" [0] [0]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-language-level-speaking-skills-age-eight-year-old-vocabulary-analysis-a8149926.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

hsbauauvhabzb 6y ago

You forgot threatening to withdraw from Australia as it would ‘no longer be viable’. Laughable to think that google news would be even 1% of their total income for the country.

graeme 6y ago
They were threatening to withdraw because the law requires google to give news orgs advance notice of any algo changes. That utterly breaks google’s anti spam efforts. They discuss it here: https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-asia/australia/news-code-path-forward/amp/ https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-asia/australia/n...
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  This page doesn't contain the word 'spam' - is that actually Google's claim, or are you inferring it?
  - graeme 6y ago
    I’m inferring it because it’s basic knowledge that search engines use algorithms to show good stuff and avoid spam. There’s a whole seo industry dedicated to gaming the engines. Inference almost feels like too big a word there. Anti-spam is fundamental to what search algos do. The point of the link is google says this: >“ While we recognise that the Government has made tweaks to this provision, it’s still not feasible for Google or consistent with our ability to offer quality services. We make thousands of algorithm updates every year, so providing 14 days’ notice of any significant changes to algorithms or “internal practices” in the way the Code prescribes just isn’t workable. This provision also continues to put every other business that relies on Google Search at a disadvantage, all to benefit one group of businesses—news publishers.” They’d prefer not to say “we’d be overrun with spam if we made this change” but it’s part of why it would be unworkable. The tweaks google makes are part of the cat and mouse game with spammers and gamers.
    - throwaway2245 6y ago

graeme 6y ago

> be "like if you had to pay to tell your friends about a new coffee shop"[1]. That is what the law does though. It only does it for google and facebook, and only for news, but it does exactly that. Not only that, but in the coffee shop example you must give a recommendation. You can’t decline to do so even though the govt really will send you a bill. You also have to give 14 day advance notice to coffee shops that you are going to change your recommendations. This also changes your recommendation cycle: if a coffeeshop starts serving bad coffee you have to wait 14 days to stop recommending them, and you’ll have to pay them every time you recommend them during that period. The bill is exactly that dumb. It can be hard to explain something is dumb without sounding condescending. Google probably could have done a better job. But....were you objecting to the coffee analogy because it’s wrong? It isn’t.

mattmanser 6y ago
Exactly what's "dumb" about this? You've got Google, who are now pretty much running the world high street as the quintessential evil rentier, providing little value while extracting virtually all the profits. They are constantly moving the goal posts, which can ruin businesses overnight, with no oversight. Now they have to tell businesses beforehand before they make them bankrupt, so the business at least has a chance to change. Does that sound less dumb and more reasonable if written that way?
- username90 6y ago
  Remove Google and you'll likely see the open web slowly dying as the remaining big corps reduces its power and moves everything to walled gardens.
  - username90 6y ago
    To explain further, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple and Amazon would be happy if the open web died and people had to use apps instead. The only big player with self interest in ensuring the open web continues to exist and be a good user experience is Google.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

I don't understand how either of these actions show that Google has too much power. Putting a banner on their own website, and experimenting with complying with the legislation, seem like reasonable and measured steps in response to the challenges they face. I feel like any website facing this type of regulation would take similar steps, no matter how big or small. Can you explain?

underwater 6y ago
Making the banner non-dismissable, not indicating there are missing results, and experimenting on individuals by degrading their experience unnecessarily are not things you do when you respect your users. If Google is going to pretend it's a neutral, benign, entity they should at least try to pretend they care about us.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
  I asked how those behaviors show Google's power. You seem to be commenting about something else.

h_anna_h 6y ago

> you break the way search engines work, and you no longer have a free and open web. The hypocrisy...

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

They do not pay taxes in Australia but they use Australia's infrastructure to collect the data they need on Australians.