Google Writes Open Letter to Australians Stating Your Search Experience Will Be Hurt by New Regulation

Over the past several months, the Australian government has been preparing legislation to force Google (and Facebook) to pay local publishers for content that appears in Search and News. The tech companies have come out against this proposal, and Google today is directly appealing to its Australian users in an open letter.

Google says that it would be forced to give an unfair advantage to news media businesses, thus making Search and YouTube results “worse for you” This entails providing that “one group” with “information that would help them artificially inflate their ranking over everyone else, even when someone else provides a better result.”

In the context of YouTube, this means giving “large news publishers confidential information” about how the algorithm works. This disadvantages all other creators and “would mean you could receive fewer views and earn less.”

Google has a separate open letter for YouTubers in Australia that criticizes how the law “prioritises the traditional news industry over smaller creators of content and the platforms where they find an audience.” One specific argument is how news media businesses can “demand large amounts of money above and beyond what they earn on the platform.”

But a number of the letter’s assertions were challenged by the ACCC.

“The open letter published by Google today contains misinformation about the draft News Media Bargaining Code,” the commission said in a statement.

• “Google will not be required to charge Australians for the use of its free services such as Google Search and YouTube unless it chooses to do so.
• “Google will not be required to share any additional user data with Australian news businesses unless it chooses to do so.”

The draft code is open for public consultation until August 28.