The Conversation has neatly summarised the situation. It has pointed to the same alternatives as the discussion in this topic including Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo as well as Ecosia. The last targets more positive and environmentally focused content.
The Conversation includes commentary by Tim Berners-Lee “ it is also unfair for a search engine to make money using content that others have created.”
The discussion is not only about the likes of the Murdoch empire. It is also about the outcomes for many other smaller organisations whose content fills out the search results provided through Google etc.
In December 2020 Google accounted for 94.37% of searches in Australia. How can paying for ad space there instead of Google possibly be effective? It’s a monopoly with Google holding everyone hostage
An interesting exercise is to do a search using Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo side by side. While their search algorisms may be different, the commercial ones seem to have more commercial offering higher in the search results.
If Google decides (which is extremely unlikely to occur), pull their search engine out of the Australian market, this would be a significant hit on their future revenue, especially from search based advertising placements. A company wouldn’t remove themselves from a market place to make a political point…and shoot itself in the foot at the same time.
It might if that market is only 25 million people, and it has a customer base in the billions. Relatively cheap example to stop others from getting the same idea.
I just Googled “Cairns carjacking” to read the details of a pair or alleged grubs who went on an alleged massive crime spree in FNQ this week. and these were the top 3 results.
The first 2 are for Murdoch’s local rag and are nothing more than attempts to get persons to subscribe whilst the third is for a free local publication which provides the complete story from go to whoa.
Why on earth should Google have to pay Murdoch to help him try to get subscribers?
Willing to bet those companies also pay for ads on Google in ADDITION. Yes it can be worth advertising to the 1.5% of searches DuckDuckGo gets, but no it’s not an effective REPLACEMENT for advertising on Google. All businesses are forced to deal with Google as their main ad space
If one uses a different password for every site/account/etc, a hundred or more is not at all surprising to me - mine contains just north of 300, with maybe a few outdated entries …
Please Google, Do Not Leave Australia! I would be heartbroken to see such an iconic search tool lost forever in Australia. I use Google everyday like everyone…
We need Google!
Unfortunately Michael might be wrong as other countries such as Canada are also contemplating similar laws to prodtect the future of the news industry…
If any country starts to lose a diverse range, causing news to be only available from a limited number of outlets, then this is likely to impact on democracy as we know it. Image if all the smaller independent news agencies folded and we were left with one…say Newscorp. This scenario is possibĺe as Newscorp can subsidise its news businesses through other businesses in its portfolio of businesses.
Speaking to some younger generations in our family, they indicated they don’t read whole news stories but the headline and supporting text in social media feeds, Google homepage etc and put two and two together about the rest of the story. I asked why not read the article and the response was don’t have time (I interpret don’t have concentration). If the younger generations get their news this way, the news agencies don’t get traffic to their websites, and the platforms gain the benefit of their articles, albeit extracts, as ùsers don’t leave these platforms and are subject to revenue generating activities on them.
Just as unfortunately, just because other countries are following Australia, does not make it less than a cash grab. I’m with Pascoe on this. I detest google and facebook both, for a whole lot of reasons but this is not one of them. Shutting them out isnt going to change the behaviour of those younger generations you speak of.
Agreed, but the proposed laws are not addressing this issue - they are if anything likely to exacerbate the current media concentration. This changes nothing for me, and I will keep using DDG as my search engine.
Im fed up with how many advertisers keep hounding me. I keep closing everything but they keep sending advertising so fed up. Its become a, massive sales pitch for Facebook so horrendous. It should be used to connect people not sell things.
Excepting FB is a business and businesses sell things; they are not public services. How would you (and your ‘friends’) go if FB charged say $120 p.a. for an account in lieu of advertising?
If you are not familiar check fbpurity.com for a browser extension (if you are using a browser not the FB app) that lets you filter out all sorts of irritating rubbish from FB. It is available for multiple browsers, but not all.
