I think the media conglomerates overestimate their importance to Australian customers - for countries like France there's a language barrier, but the vast, vast majority of searches by Australians can be served well without needing any content from the Australian news companies. If linking to your content is expensive, and linking to other content is cheap, then it's perfectly reasonable and generally legal to prefer cheap sources whenever possible.
Google pulling out of any regular nation would be existentially damaging.
MS/Bing would weaponize this to the nth degree - they already have service contracts with businesses and corporations around the world and they'd be in a global push to 'drop Google' for the inherent risk of pullout they just witnesses.
This would be the #1 talking point for their massive global salesforce.
Why are you quoting the words "pulls out" next to an actual quote from my comment? I didn't use it in my comment, and neither did anyone else in the comment thread. Google refusing to play ball here could take any number of forms, from the extreme hardball of simply refusing and tying it up in the courts (and getting fined and perhaps blocked), to just blacklisting links to the companies that the government is extorting them on behalf of. The latter wouldn't even be "hardball"; companies that are explicitly disagreeing with Google's terms for inclusion aren't included in their results, in the same way that robots.txt allows for.
> Google pulling out of any regular nation would be existentially damaging.
There's plenty of precedent for this level of targeted reduction in service as a response to gov't demands. They shut down Google News in Spain, removed French news links under very-similar demands, etc etc. None of this has had the ripple effect you're describing, and is evidence in favor of the fact that Google is concerned about a broader ripple effect: Why else would they give up all the revenue from referral to these sites instead of paying a portion of the revenue in protection money?
+ " They shut down Google News in Spain, removed French news links under very-similar demands, etc etc. None of this has had the ripple effect you're describing"
The 'ripple effect' is happening right now in Australia.
Second - it doesn't matter that much where the tit-for-tat is - it would be existentially disastrous for Google or FB in either sense.
If a corporation was 'out' of a major, regular western nation for any reason I think the CEO's job would be in serious trouble, even Zuck.
What makes you think Bing or DDG wants to pay news companies to share their link and drive traffic to these companies? If anything, forcing revenue sharing would cause a small search engine like DDG out of business as it tries to scale up. If you wanted to start up a search engine today, imagine what these extra costs would do?
> If they are smart they react with legislation forcing more 'choice' in search on every level.
In your anti-google crusade, you are missing the point. It makes no sense for search engines to pay news or any company to drive traffic to those companies. If anything, the news companies/etc should be paying search engines if you really think about it. It isn't a Goolge vs Bing/DDG/etc issue. It's a Google/Bing/DDG/etc vs news/media companies issue.
If these news websites don't want to be part of google search, then they can easily exclude themselves via robots.txt.
Imagine if you woke up and G was not available in your country?
You switch to an alternative: Bing, DDG etc..
Alternatives that many Aussies may not have really been aware of.
And now, 100% of G's user base is being 'conditioned' on competitors' products - their default behavior, the icons they click, the default search engine for browsers changing over.
And for most people - DDG/Bing is probably just as good as Google.
A month later, G comes back to Australia, how many people bother to switch back? How many people have come to 'be fine' with something else? How many people resent G?
Does the Aussie Gov, which will realize that 'search' is an essential aspect of operating ability, will even allow government workers to use a service from someone who will drop it instantly, and sign a service contract with Bing? Corporations who see it as an existential flaw and require everyone to have 3 search solutions 'at the ready'.
For FB obviously it's a different story, however, a smart politician would paint FB as a 'foreign enemy' and turn the tide of populism against them as well. Because Aussie didn't 'ban' them, FB/G pulled out themselves, denying people their service, most people would 'blame them'.
FB has some seemingly essential aspects in terms of communication, but I think that people would soon discover that it's not essential at all.
It would be a disaster for both of them.
The other risk is that this disaster becomes contagious.
If G 'shuts down' in Australia - what does the UK government do? The EU gov? If they are smart they react with legislation forcing more 'choice' in search on every level.