On 18th August 2020, Alphabet Inc’s Google lodged Australian antitrust law pushing tech companies to pay for the news that spark on their websites. Google proposed this law because these firms will get a high search ranking that will help them to grow and earn good unfair profit over small unknown websites and YouTube channels. This law has created an atmosphere of tension between big companies and ACCC.
Google Australia managing director in a post said, “You have always relied on Google search and YouTube to show you what’s more relevant and helpful to you. We could no longer guarantee that under this law. This law wouldn’t just impact the way Google and YouTube work with news media businesses – it would impact all of our Australian users” which was titled with “Open letter to Australians”.
Consequences of Australian Antitrust Law
Google came up with the user’s security, Google said that if they started paying to the big tech firms for their content then the user’s personal data could be shared. Also, their free search service would be at risk because of the Australian Antitrust law.
As you know that Google’s YouTube service helps companies and individuals. It also helps YouTube as well as the featuring advertisements and the content creators to make a good amount of revenue.
At the end of July, they already warned the big companies like Google and Facebook Inc’s that from this year, the companies need to start paying media companies.
Australian competition and consumer commission (ACCC) chair Rod Sims said that “This proposed law would allow Australian news businesses to negotiate for fair payment for their journalists” work that is included on Google Services. This will address a significant bargaining power imbalance between Australian news media businesses, Google, and Facebook.