Australia, remaining persistent in the face of Google threatening to pull out its search engine from the country altogether, has finally managed to tame the Alphabet-owned tech giant.
According to the latest news, under the proposed Media Bargaining Code legislation in Australia, Google has struck a multi-year deal with News Corp. which is a Murdoch-owned media conglomerate.
Announced on Wednesday, this deal, agreed upon for the duration of three years, will enable News Corp entities in the U.S, U.K. and Australia such as the Wall Street Journal and New York Post to be featured on Google News Showcase.
The press release of the announcement mentioned that the companies will enter into an ad-revenue sharing agreement with Google as part of the deal which also includes the development of a subscription platform and Youtube investing in video journalism.
Google & News Corp: A Unlikely Partnership
Even though both Google and News Corp have shaken hands on the deal, they are still a very unlikely partnership because the latter has been a staunch harsh critic of the search giant.
Before the materialisation of this recent deal, previously News Corp had consistently pushed for breaking up the Alphabet-owned tech giant by regulators all around the world. The media conglomerate also lobbied against the injustice Google allegedly kept inflicting on publishers for a long time.
But, now in light of Google finding itself in a tough in Australia where complaint by News Corp and others helped fuel a strong push to implement some of the strongest measures against tech platforms, it seems like the ever-continuing fight is finally over.
With the new legislation dubbed ‘Media Bargaining code’ the Australian Government seeks to make online platforms such as Google and Facebook to pay news outlets for displaying and linking to their content.
Google and Facebook’s initial reaction was to dismiss and pushed back against the proposal. On one hand, the social media behemoth said it will be forced to block all users in Australia from sharing news content, while on the other Google threatened to leave the country entirely if the legislation was enacted. But, all those threats were rendered futile by the continued enthusiasm and determination of the Australian Government.
Officials backing the Media Bargaining Code largely dismissed the drastic threats. Instead, they brought on board Microsoft as a bargaining chip which recently announced that it supports the Australian legislation and that the Bing search engine is willing to live by the country’s rules if subjected to them.
Finally, post all the intense tussle spanning over more than 18 months, now the issue has been partly resolved. Don Harrison, President of Global Partnerships, in a statement regarding the same, said that their agreement with News Corp will cover a wide range of Google products such as News Showcase, Youtube, Web Stories, Audio and their ad technology.
It now remains to be seen how long Facebook can manage to extend the fight against the Australian Government and if similar to Google, the social media behemoth will concede as well. We will keep you updated on all future devlopemtns. Until then, stay tuned.
