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Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Google ‘more positive’ about its future in Australia
By Lisa Visentin and Zoe Samios
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has emerged from talks with Google boss Sundar Pichai confident the search giant will not quit Australia, in a sign the brinkmanship over new digital media rules may be subsiding.
Mr Morrison said that he held “constructive” talks with Google chief executive Mr Pichai on Thursday morning and expressed confidence that it would not shut down its search engine in Australia if new laws forcing it and Facebook to pay for appearance of news on their platforms were implemented.
“I have been able to send them the best possible signals that should give them a great encouragement to engage with the process, and conclude the arrangements we’d like to see them conclude with the various news organisations,” Mr Morrison said on Thursday. “I think we have been able to get that into a much more positive space about their ability to continue to provide services here in Australia.”
In a further sign Google’s position may be softening, industry sources familiar with the search giant’s plans said it would launch its ‘News Showcase’ product as early as tomorrow. The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age revealed last week that Google had reversed plans to halt the launch of the news product in response to its grilling at a Senate Hearing two weeks ago.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai held talks with Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday after Microsoft declared it was prepared to fill any void in Australia’s search engine market.Credit: AP
The News Showcase project has been central in Google’s push for revisions to the media code, a mechanism it says would allow it to pay publishers for news content and avoid being forced to pay to display links to stories.
Google first announced plans to launch News Showcase in Australia last June and signed deals with small local outlets such as Crikey, The Saturday Paper, The Conversation and regional newspaper business Australian Community Media.
It delayed its plans when the local competition regulator revealed a draft version of a news media bargaining code and told outlets it needed to understand the financial impact of the newly proposed laws. Google changed its mind early this year when Senator Andrew Bragg criticised News Showcase as a “pillar of smoke” and grilled the company’s local managing director Mel Silva on why it was proposing a payment model that was not available.
The product has been welcomed by small outlets but criticised by major companies such as Nine Entertainment Co (owner of this masthead).
Mr Morrison, who was joined by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Communications Minister Paul Fletcher on the call with Mr Pichai on Thursday, did not say whether Google had withdrawn its threat to shut down search but said the government still planned to legislate the code.
“At the end of the day, they understand that Australia sets the rules for how these things operate. And I was very clear about how I saw this playing out,” he said.
The code will force Google and Facebook into binding commercial agreements to pay Australian news providers for the ability to display news content in newsfeeds and search results, or face fines of up to 10 per cent of annual revenues.
A day before Mr Morrison’s conversation, rival tech giant Microsoft declared it “fully” supported the code and pledged to invest in its search engine Bing to fill the void in the event Google exited the market.
Microsoft president Brad Smith said on Wednesday he and global chief executive, Satya Nadella, had met with Mr Morrison last week to inform him the company was prepared to sign up to the legislation and compensate publishers.
“We are comfortable with a model that, frankly, reduces the revenue that is coming to the search service and increases the revenue that is going to news publishers,” Mr Smith told The Herald and Age.
The Morrison government has been locked in a battle with the tech platforms since unveiling the code on December 8. A final vote on the code is expected early this year after a Senate committee examining the laws delivers its report on February 12.
Both Google and Facebook have described the code as “unworkable” in its current form. Google has threatened to turn off its search engine in Australia if the proposed code becomes law, while Facebook has said it would be forced to remove news articles from its main app.
Australia’s largest media companies such as Nine Entertainment and News Corp are urging the government to pass the laws.
Google and Microsoft are not the only tech giants to contact government about the code in recent weeks. Mr Frydenberg has also revealed that he had been contacted by Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg to discuss concerns about the code. “Mark Zuckerberg did not convince me to back down,” Mr Frydenberg told the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.
Google was approached for comment.