Faced with a proposed new Australian law on having to pay news sites for links to their articles, Google is threatening to pull the search engine out of the continent.
Google is not the only one that could have to fork out under the change. Facebook will also need to pay for news from Australian news sites shared on the social media platform.
The new framework proposed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is mandating that Facebook and Google pay news sites for linking to their stories.
This is against a backdrop where news sites are strugging to stay afloat with ever decreasing advertising revenue which they attribute to the search and social media giants.
According to Mel Silva, Managing Director of Google in Australia and New Zealand, the proposed law is “unworkable.”
Facebook is also against the proposal and is reported to be considering blocking Australians from sharing news on its platform if the law comes to pass.
The outcome of this new law and the subsequent responses by Facebook and Google will certainly be followed closely by other nations whose media and publishing industries have also been hit by loss of advertising revenue.
Entelechy Asia 