Google failing to read the room in Australia, says Reset’s Chris Cooper

Google badly misread the public’s sentiment about the value of its search engine when they threatened to curtail Australians’ access to it.

‘Google just came across as a bully. The average punter thinks the internet is always changing anyway, and perhaps they have realised that Google isn’t actually that important,’ Reset’s Chris Cooper said. Picture: AFP

Google badly misread the public’s sentiment about the value of its search engine when they threatened to curtail Australians’ access to it, according to the boss of an independent digital research organisation.

Chris Cooper, executive director of Reset Australia — a lobby group that “works to ­counter digital threats to democracy” — said the tech giant had been caught off-guard by the public’s apparent willingness to embrace rival search engines should Google make good on its promise to exit the Australian market if the federal government’s news media bargaining code becomes law.

“The public may not understand the breadth and depth of the issue, but their mindset seems to be, ‘if Google leaves, I’ll just go to another search engine’,” he told The Australian.

“Google just came across as a bully. The average punter thinks the internet is always changing anyway, and perhaps they have realised that Google isn’t actually that important.”

Last week, Microsoft president Brad Smith said the company was committed to stepping up investment in Australia to transform its search engine, Bing, into a fit-for-purpose service for small businesses across Australia if Google shuts down its dominant search service.

Chris Cooper, executive director of Reset Australia.

“We are prepared to invest more, not less,” Mr Smith told The Australian from Seattle.

Microsoft supports the federal government’s proposed news media bargaining code and has agreed that it would live by that code if it gained enough market share for the code to apply.

Mr Cooper, who appeared before last month’s Senate hearing into the media code, said Microsoft’s overtures to Prime Minister Scott Morrison were significant.

“Certainly, the prospect of Bing replacing Google didn’t cause a big outcry,” he said.

Mr Cooper also said the recent pop-up that appeared on Google Search — featuring Mel Silva, the managing director of the company’s Australian arm, explaining how the media code would “break” how the search engine works — was a mistake.

“Both their threat to leave Australia, and the pop-up, encapsulated everything that has been wrong about Google’s approach,” he said.

Last week, Google announced it had negotiated deals with small news outlets, signing them up to Google Showcase, which allows it to pay publishers to curate content for what it terms “story panels” for readers.

On Sunday, a Google spokesman said it was seeking to sell Showcase to a wider audience.

“We continue to be in negotiations with publishers large and small,” the spokesman said.

But Mr Cooper said Google’s offer to resolve the stand-off over the news media code by putting forward one of its own products as a solution was “outrageous”.

“Our view on Google News Showcase is that it equates to not much more than a bribery scheme,” he said. “Offering injections of cash to starving publishing businesses is clearly a tactic to divide their opposition and to reduce the perceived need for the arbitration model and establishment of a formula for ad revenue redistribution.”

News Corp (publisher of The Australian), the Guardian Australia and Nine have previously voiced their strong opposition to the Showcase model.