Google Spars With Australian Watchdog After News Row Deepens
Google said the draft regulation will force it to share information with external parties.
(Bloomberg) --
Google and Australia’s competition watchdog exchanged online fire after the U.S. company warned that an imminent law governing revenue-sharing with the media will force it to disclose sensitive data and jeopardize free services like YouTube.
The Alphabet Inc. subsidiary said Monday the draft regulation will force it to share information with external parties and “put our free services at risk.” The Australian Competition & Consumer Commission fired back, saying the envisioned legislation won’t require Google to charge unless it chose to, prompting the U.S. company to accuse the agency of misrepresenting its views.
Australia’s government in July ordered Facebook Inc. and Google to share revenue generated from news articles. Both will have to negotiate with traditional media on remuneration in good faith. If no agreement is reached, there will be a binding arbitration process, and penalties for breaching the code can reach A$10 million ($7 million) or 10% of local revenue.
The move aims to correct what the government says is a power imbalance between two of the world’s most profitable companies and a local media industry that’s bleeding jobs as it loses advertising revenue to digital platforms. It follows similar measures elsewhere in the world, including in France, where the antitrust regulator in April ordered Google to pay media companies to display snippets of articles.
“We strongly disagree and are concerned that our view of the Code has been represented this way during a consultation phase,” Google said in an emailed statement. “We do not intend to charge users for our free services,” but “Search and YouTube, both of which are free services, are at risk in Australia.”
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