70% of the commercial media here is controlled by one American company, and perhaps not coincidentally they have a very close relationship with the Government. The Government has literally just given their cable network $40 million dollars over the last few budgets, completely un-tendered and without any reporting requirements or anything, to "help advance women's sport" - even though 75% of Australians aren't subscribers and SBS would be a better venue for such content...

So your solution is to make them even worse by letting Google bleed them dry?

What percentage of Australian's news reading goes through Google? What percentage of Australia's advertising spend does Google command?

I don't have all the answers, but the best way I think I can support quality journalism is to subscribe to some independent news sites now (Michael West, MacroBusiness, Anthony Klan's new site The Klaxon. Might think about Crikey too because it seems pretty good).

Seems like News Corp helped them both get started. Why shouldn't News Corp continue to fund others as well?

It's a blatant moneygrab for fossils from a government they have by the balls.

The classified ads have dried up and they're out of ideas.

As for news discovered by regular search, I think that is different because the user has to input specific search keywords and restrict to recent results. The difference is about intention and recurring visits.

The situation seems similar to the Google Books fiasco, where we didn't end up with a searchable online library of out of print books. Lots of arguments were raised back then as now, but the bottom line was that everyone tried to do good for himself and we all got less - the prisoner's dilemma in action.

If it didn't make business sense then Google wouldn't be showing them in the first place. It plainly does make business sense. Google shouldn't be afraid to pay for what it uses.

The want to have their cake and eat it too, plus get paid for the privilege.

Having said this, I have no sympathy for Google either.

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/australian-news-media-...

Well, nothing except for the fact that their own sites are not compelling enough for customers in order to be profitable, so they don't want to do it.

What do you think this is all about? The ACCC is acting to address the practical realities of the situation. That's what the ACCC is there for.

Just the fact that the ABC and SBS are excluded says it all really. This is clearly not about journalism.

You really are failing to understand this. You must try harder.

I understand and it's ridiculous. Just because your business is not profitable shouldn't mean another business should be forced to subsidise it. Unless you have mates that can make laws, that is.

Lots of interesting things on Robots meta tag:

https://developers.google.com/search/reference/robots_meta_t...

This money would go to an organisation which largely peddles outrage and division.

Frankly that's Google, Facebook, and Twitter. They are aimed at maximising engagement and outrage does that for them. They keep feeding people what they think they want to see and the further down the rabbit hole they go the weirder and more extreme it gets.

Please, do a google image search for "daily telegraph cover", and then give me your description of the Murdoch news media.

The only way they'd survive is by producing fawning, uncritical reports, like almost every interview done with movie stars.

And SBS is partially government funded: https://www.sbs.com.au

But it's not enough to have just two news organisations.

To see the truth of my claim, consider what's going to happen if Google declines to "use" the Australian news media after this law is passed. I doubt any serious person believes this will be helpful to the news media's bottom line. So you'll have an even more serious problem for news media revenue, and also the search engine most people use will be doing a worse job of helping people get the information they're looking for. All because the government chose a complex policy solution to a simple policy problem. (At least, the problem as stated is simple. I suspect the actual problem the government is trying to solve is a little different than what is publicly claimed.)

Why do you believe that everyone else must pay Google's costs? Why do you think Google shouldn't pay its own way? It's a bizarre position to take.

It's disappointing that you've failed to understand the issues. Read more:

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/australian-news-media-...

There's not much I can do for you anymore. It's up to you now.

Which is not the same as "Google is profitable."

Good grief. This is about making sure journalism survives. Google bleeding it dry doesn't help it survive.

What do you think?

https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/australian-news-media-...

They've tried to scare people into compliance since the 50s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_detector_van

There's nothing in the terms that means the money goes to hiring journalists at all.