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CANBERRA, Australia —
\nGoogle warned on Monday that the Australian government\u2019s plans to make digital giants pay for news content threatens users\u2019 free services in Australia and could hand users\u2019 data to media organizations.<\/p>\n
\nThe U.S.-based company’s warning, contained in what it called an \u201cOpen letter to Australians,\u201d comes a week before public consultations close on Australian draft laws that would make both Google and Facebook pay for news siphoned from commercial media companies.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cA proposed law … would force us to provide you with a dramatically worse Google Search and YouTube, could lead to your data being handed over to big news businesses, and would put the free services you use at risk in Australia,\u201d Google Australia and New Zealand managing director Mel Silva wrote.<\/p>\n
\nGoogle owns YouTube, a video-sharing platform.<\/p>\n
\nBoth Google and Facebook have condemned the proposed legislation, which was released last month and aims to succeed where other countries have failed in making them compensate media businesses for news content.<\/p>\n
\nAustralian competition watchdog Rod Sims, chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which drafted the laws, said Google\u2019s letter \u201ccontains misinformation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cGoogle 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,\u201d Sims said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cGoogle will not be required to share any additional user data with Australian news businesses unless it chooses to do so,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
\nAustralian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, the minister responsible for the consumer watchdog, said in a statement that the draft law \u201cremains open for consultation, providing an opportunity for media companies and digital platforms to provide feedback\u201d until Aug. 28.<\/p>\n
\nSwinburne University senior lecturer on media Belinda Barnet described the Google letter as a \u201ccynical exercise\u201d designed to \u201cscare Google users.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI see no merit in any of the arguments,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cOne of the most ironic arguments is that they\u2019re going to have to hand over some data to news organizations \u2014 for example which article people have read and how long they may have read it for \u2014 and this coming from the world\u2019s major privacy violator and certainly the world\u2019s largest data aggregator is a bit rich,\u201d Barnet added.<\/p>\n
\nGoogle has been battling the Australian consumer watchdog on two fronts. Last month, the watchdog launched court action against Google for allegedly misleading account holders about its use of their personal data.<\/p>\n
\nThe commission alleges that Google misled millions of Australians to obtain their consent and expand the scope of personal information that it collects about users\u2019 internet activity to target advertising. Google denies the allegations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[ad_1] Google has warned that the Australian government\u2019s plans to make digital giants pay for news content threatens users\u2019 free services in Australia and could hand users\u2019 data to media organizations By ROD McGUIRK Associated Press August 17, 2020, 8:37 AM 3 min read Share to FacebookShare to TwitterEmail this article CANBERRA, Australia — Google …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24065,95225,92218,92228,81247,93259,93260,6152,94532,94531,92219,111598,62466,59984,133422,4205],"class_list":["post-213299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tie-world","tag-business","tag-computing-and-information-technology","tag-general-news","tag-government-and-politics","tag-laws","tag-legislation","tag-legislature","tag-media","tag-media-and-entertainment-industry","tag-media-industry","tag-online-media","tag-search-technology","tag-social-media","tag-software","tag-technolog","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hameed.nwar.uk\/sa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}