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Comment by MattGaiser | Hacker News Reader

Google will probably eliminate Google News for Australians. Why exactly would Google pay money for a service which earns nothing?

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This is not about Google News, this includes Google Search.

> Mr Sims said if Google took a similar approach to its actions in Spain when it was asked to pay for news on its Google News tab, it would be irrelevant because the code covered news content in Google's primary function, search.

(from the sibling commentor's link: https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/facebook-a...)

I can't wait to see what will happen. I highly doubt Google will pay the black mail. Will they just shut off Google for Australia?

> Will they just shut off Google for Australia?

And lose the billions of revenue over a few million in news payments?

Of course not. Good on the Australian Government for putting them in a position where they actually have to contribute rather than taking their toys home and pouting

From the article linked in the comment:

> News Corp has suggested the number is closer to $1 billion.

I highly doubt these companies will fork over a billion dollars each to just stay in Australia. Australia needs Google more than Google needs Australia.

I'm sure we'll survive somehow without it.

Murdoch's empire is fading fast in Australia. The Australian, Foxtel, the print papers are all on their last legs. Their streaming offering Binge is laughably bad - it's only 1080p and works on barely any devices. They could well be done here too.

All upside, as far as I see it.

Google is not a superior search engine anymore and you don't really need it.

From a privazy perspective it would be awesome for Google to block Australia like some US news sites block european users bc. of GDPR.

Are other search engines not bound by the same law?

"In the first instance, the Government has announced that the mandatory code of conduct will apply to Facebook and Google. However, the Treasurer may also make subsequent instruments in the future designating other platforms where fundamental bargaining power imbalances with Australian news businesses emerge." https://www.accc.gov.au/system/files/Exposure%20Draft%20EM%2...

Despite the downvotes, I think It's kind of true tho. I don't think a country will collapse without google.

I agree that a country could easily go without Google Search, there's enough competitors in that space and they all do mostly the same thing that people would quickly switch with no issues.

The bigger problem would be Australians giving up YouTube, and to a lesser extent Android if Google Play Services is withdrawn.

There's no real competitor to YouTube, and especially during the virus where everyone's at home with nothing to do going without it would be a major pain point for many Australians. The country wouldn't collapse but it would be a big deal.

That's all assuming Google withdraws entirely from the country of course.

The tele providers would love that the play store went offline and get replacements. It is quite silly that they ship with Google Play as default actually I guess they are forced by Google.

Youtube on the other hand would be a caltural loss due to the network effect even if replacements would be plenty.

The big publishers are asking for $600m to $1b (roughly 10% - 15%) of Google and Facebook's local revenue. I doubt news earns them anywhere near that amount.

https://www.afr.com/companies/media-and-marketing/facebook-a...

Doesn't the news you choose to read tell Google a lot about you?

Google is very good about shuttering projects that doesn't make them money. I'm sure if they're still running the service. It's making them money some how.

Brand recognition? Customer goodwill? Not everything needs to be outright profitable. Google has a lot of money to spend on sending small gifts in random directions. Source: as a Googler I got paid to literally "go find some vulnerable projects on Github and send a PR to patch them"[1]. Google does not make money in any way from things like that, but keeps doing them, just because they can.

[1]: https://opensource.googleblog.com/2017/03/operation-rosehub....

Nowhere near as much as shopping searches. It's kind of hard to monetize an interest in (say) Singaporean politics or space rockets.

It's not that hard to monetize interest in damn near _anything_ (as long as it is not clearly illegal, I guess). For the two examples you've posted, maybe advertise flights/vacations to Singapore if you show a persistent interest in Singapore, and market model rockets, space flight simulator toys, really all sorts of consumer-grade commodity products adjacent to the space industry.

They already "pay money" to develop and maintain it, you think it has zero value for them? It is a loss leader to keep you stuck on the Google brand and make Google the default for every type of search. That has enormous value. And this probably applies to Google search as well. They will just simply fight this until it goes away, because it will have implications for all other content, because why would news be special? What about blogs? What about any other original content?

But I think this could be bad for competition too. How can someone enter the market for search if you have to jump through so many hoops? Google will try to work a deal that works well for them and tries to lock out competition as well by making the startup cost high.

My hope is that it ends up forcing them to be more friendly to publishers in how they send them traffic and how they appropriate their content. But I don't think money should change hands to let them use the content.

most of the news sites will use some form of programmatic ads which will involve Google in some form inevitably.

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