Microsoft backs Australian plan to make Google pay for news
Microsoft said on Wednesday it works with Australia’s plans to make the biggest digital platforms pay for news and would help smaller businesses transfer their marketing to Bing if Google quits the united states.
Microsoft has been positioning itself to improve market share because of its search engine Bing just after a Google executive told a Senate hearing previous month that it would likely make its internet search engine unavailable in Australia if the federal government goes in advance with a draft law that would make tech giants pay for news content.
Microsoft President Brad Smith said on a statement that he and Microsoft LEADER Satya Nadella had told Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Communications Minister Paul Fletcher in an online meeting the other day that “Microsoft fully supports” the so-called News Media Bargaining Code.
Morrison this week confirmed he previously spoken to Nadella about Bing replacing Google found in Australia.
“I can let you know, Microsoft’s pretty confident” that Australians wouldn't normally be worse off, Morrison said on Monday.
Smith said he previously assured the federal government leaders that smaller businesses who wished to transfer their advertising from Google to Bing could conduct as a result simply and without transfer costs.
“We believe that the existing legislative proposal represents a fundamental step towards a more level playing field and a good fairer digital ecosystem for buyers, business and society,” Smith said.
Although Bing is Australia’s second most preferred internet search engine, it has only a 3.6% market share, relating to web analytics program Statcounter. Google says it has got 95%.
Swinburne University senior lecturer on media Belinda Barnet said Bing and different search engines could fill the void kept by Google and deliver rewards.
“People need to know you won't be personalized in the sense that Google advertising in searches is going to be, so Bing doesn’t know and frankly doesn’t care that you’re searching for yoga pants, for instance,” Barnet said.
“Some of these systems, Google and Facebook specifically, feed you even more misinformation if you’re already susceptible to clicking on misnformation, thus they create this echo chamber, in a way,” she said. “But something like DuckDuckGo and Ecosia is not going to know that during the past you’ve viewed 100 articles about how precisely vaccines are terrible and they'll just provide you with the most accurate facts that they can find.”
Peter Strong, leader of the Council of SMALL COMPANY Organizations Australia, an advocacy group, expected the disruption to smaller businesses created by Google’s departure from Australia would be short lived.
“We're not panicking,” Good said. “Nonetheless it could have a short-term impact.”
“It might be a bad element if Google quits, but if Bing took over, the situation will be the same,” he added. “One organization has the capacity to blackmail a region and that should under no circumstances happen," he said, contacting for more government regulation.
The required code proposed by the government aims to create Google and Facebook pay Australian media companies fairly for using news content the tech giants siphon from news sites.
There are no plans to create smaller search engines such as for example Bing purchase linking users to Australian news, however the government has not ruled that option out.
Google has faced pressure from authorities elsewhere to cover news. Last month, it signed a manage a group of French publishers paving just how for the provider to create digital copyright payments. Beneath the arrangement, Google will negotiate specific licensing handles newspapers, with payments predicated on factors including the sum published daily and regular internet site traffic.
But Google is resisting the Australian plan because it would have less control over how much it would need to pay. Under the Australian program, if an online platform and a news organization can’t agree on a cost for news, an arbitration panel will make a binding decision on repayment.
Source: japantoday.com
