Could Google really leave Australia?
Google has threatened to pull out of the Australian market if a new law governing its relationship with news publishers goes ahead.
The government is introducing a law to address a long-bubbling row over whether tech giants should pay for news that appears in search or is shared on their platforms. The proposed law would mandate that Google has commercial agreements with every news organisation - or enter forced arbitration, something Google says is "unworkable". "If this version of the code were to become law, it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia," the regional director, Mel Silva, said. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Google: "We don't respond to threats".