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‘Mate! No Google?’ Australia faces life without key search engine
Google opposes a planned law that would force it and Facebook to pay Australian publishers for news content.
Imagine a world without Google, the search engine so pervasive it’s the starting point for more than five billion queries a day. That’s the reality facing Australia, where the tech giant is threatening to unplug its homepage in a standoff with the government.
Google opposes a planned law that would force the company and Facebook Inc. to pay Australian publishers for news content. The Internet juggernaut’s ultimatum to local lawmakers — change the legislation, or else — has left a digital vacuum hanging over a nation that essentially knows just one way to navigate the web. Google runs 95% of Internet searches in Australia.
Potential fallout from the spat goes far beyond Australia for Alphabet Inc.-owned Google, whose dominance of global advertising has made it a target for watchdogs worldwide. If the company backs down in Australia, the pay-for-news law risks becoming a template for jurisdictions including Canada and the European Union that are following the quarrel and keen to shorten Google’s lead.
But disabling what is arguably the world’s most famous website would hand all of Australia to rivals, including Microsoft Corp.’s Bing and DuckDuckGo, which have failed to dislodge Google as the gateway to the web. These search-engine competitors would suddenly have a playground for development and a foothold to advance on the global stage.
Software-engineering student Patrick Smith exemplifies Australia’s Google dependency. The 24-year-old from Canberra said he sometimes racks up 400 Google searches a day to help with his studies, catch up on news and look up recipes. Smith said his browser from the previous day shows 150 searches — in the space of just five hours.
“The prospect of Google search disappearing is frightening at best,” Smith said. “It’s quite reflexive of me to Google something, anything, that I’m even mildly not sure of.”
Searching for ‘best beach Sydney’ on Google returns Bondi Beach in Australia’s biggest city [File: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg]
World-First Legislation
The world-first legislation will be considered by Australia’s parliament from the week starting Feb. 15 after a key senate committee recommended Friday that the bill be passed.
Google argues it drives traffic to their websites, and that being forced to pay to display snippets of news breaks the principle of an open Internet. It also opposes the law’s final-offer arbitration model that determines how much it should pay publishers.
Facebook has said it may stop Australians from sharing news on its platform if the law is enacted, an unprecedented step.
Grabbing the free hit, Smith told Morrison that Microsoft would invest to “ensure Bing is comparable to our competitors.” This week, Smith wrote in a blog post Thursday that the U.S. should adopt its own version of the Australian law.
DuckDuckGo, a search engine that says it doesn’t track its users, is also trying to cash in.
“There’s a growing global demand for privacy online and Australians don’t have to wait for government action” to stop using Google, DuckDuckGo said by email. Search Encrypt says its results expire after 30 minutes of inactivity.
“Bing is not going to be able to compete with Google in terms of quality out of the blocks,” said Daniel Angus, Brisbane-based associate professor in digital communication at Queensland University of Technology. “Australians might have to relearn how to use search.”
Google again performed best under the search, ‘australia leader,’ showing Morrison and his Liberal party at the top of the page — sourced from an official government site. Bing gave similar details, though took it from Wikipedia. DuckDuckGo offered ads for team leader jobs in Western Australia. Search Encrypt drew a blank once more.
There are signs Google’s hardline stance may be softening. Morrison said his meeting with the company was “constructive” and “should give them a great encouragement to engage with the process.” Google declined to comment on the meeting, though said in a statement it proposes compensating publishers through its News Showcase product, under which the company pays select media outlets to display curated content.
“I honestly feel that my life would become significantly more difficult,” he said.
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