Google has been facing a lot of legal battles in a lot of places around the world, and while its troubles in Europe have received a lot of publicity it is important to note that it has been facing a lot of legal challenges in Australia as well. Part of this has to do with new legislation that might mandate Google feature snippets from news organizations and be forced to bargain with these organizations with regards to how much they would be paid for the news that Google is currently using.
Google has understandably pushing back against this, claiming that this would hamper the tech giant’s efforts to create a free and fair web where meritocracy would result in the best news being shown to users rather than being forced to give equal treatment to all news organizations regardless of whether or not the news they are making is valid. According to Google, these new laws might give news organizations and publishers the chance to say pretty much whatever they want with Google being unable to prevent them from doing so in any way, shape or form.
Because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up changing the way we take in news on the internet, Google has started pushing for a change to the law that would allow publishers to choose whether or not they want Google to feature their news stories. This would give publishers a bit more control and bargaining power without taking away Google’s ability to curate the news that people might be able to see based on whether it is factual or not. This is a contentious debate, one that is grounded in a lot of beliefs that people have which are getting stronger by the day.
With all of that having been said and out of the way, it will be interesting to see where things go from here especially when you consider what a wide impact such matters could have on the information that people have access to at any given point in time.
Google has understandably pushing back against this, claiming that this would hamper the tech giant’s efforts to create a free and fair web where meritocracy would result in the best news being shown to users rather than being forced to give equal treatment to all news organizations regardless of whether or not the news they are making is valid. According to Google, these new laws might give news organizations and publishers the chance to say pretty much whatever they want with Google being unable to prevent them from doing so in any way, shape or form.
Because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up changing the way we take in news on the internet, Google has started pushing for a change to the law that would allow publishers to choose whether or not they want Google to feature their news stories. This would give publishers a bit more control and bargaining power without taking away Google’s ability to curate the news that people might be able to see based on whether it is factual or not. This is a contentious debate, one that is grounded in a lot of beliefs that people have which are getting stronger by the day.
With all of that having been said and out of the way, it will be interesting to see where things go from here especially when you consider what a wide impact such matters could have on the information that people have access to at any given point in time.
