Some news sites currently do not appear in Google search for certain users in Australia. They are blocked for testing purposes, explains Google when asked by the Australian Financial Review. Accordingly, “a few experiments, each affecting one percent of Google search users in Australia, to measure the interactions between the news business and Google search.” That goes on until the beginning of February.

As the Guardian reports, the move is also referred to by publishers as a “demonstration of power”. Google, on the other hand, says it’s just one of tens of thousands of experiments that run every year. The background to this is the new media law planned in Australia, according to which Google, as well as Facebook and other services, have to pay publishers for the use of its content. “We still want to find a working agreement and look forward to working with the Senate, political decision-makers and publishers in order to achieve a fair result for all in the interests of all Australians.”

Google calls for criticism According to Google, the current version of the law cannot be implemented. This stipulates that Google pays all news sites a kind of license fee and negotiates this with the publishers. Should no agreement be reached, an arbitration procedure is planned that does not negotiate a compromise, but instead should take the side of a negotiating partner. Above all, the search engine giant finds this impracticable. The different ideas are too big, the equivalent value is too little clear.

The fact that searching users on the pages of the publishers has also been disregarded and so advertising revenue is generated. The Australian government has meanwhile made concessions to Google and Facebook – the forwarding is to flow into the negotiations.

However, Google is apparently hoping for more concessions. In a recent blog post, critics of the media law are quoted and a call from Google follows to send concerns to the Senate. For example, Sheet Music Boss, a content creator at YouTube, writes that it is not fair that only news sites should be paid for and not all content creators.

(emw )