U.S. technology giant Microsoft on Wednesday offered to fill the gap if competitor Google continues to threaten to shut down its search engine in Australia over government plans to force it to pay for news content.
Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a statement that the company “fully supports” proposed legislation that would require Google and Facebook to compensate the media for its use of journalism. aca.
Facebook and Google have both threatened to block major Australian services if the rules, now before parliament, become law in their current form.
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However, Smith said the proposal “reasonably seeks to address the imbalance of bargaining power between digital platforms and the Australian news industry” and “represents a fundamental step towards a fairer park and a fairer digital ecosystem for consumers, business and society. “
Smith said Microsoft was ready to develop its Bing search engine, currently minnow compared to Google’s product worldwide, and welcomed Australian business advertisers to the platform. ” without transfer costs “.
Recognizing Bing’s sub-status, Smith said Microsoft would be “investing more to make sure Bing compares to our competitors and we remind people that they can help, with all reviews, that Bing will get better at what you are looking for ”.
Smith said he and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had considered the proposal last week by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who sees the offer as a major stimulus in his government’s conflict with Google and Facebook .
‘Final offer’ arrangement
Under the proposed News Bargaining Code, Google and Facebook were required to negotiate payments to individual news organizations for the use of the content on the platforms.
If agreement cannot be reached on the amount of payments, the matter would be settled in a so-called “final offer” where each party proposes a compensation amount and the arbitrator chooses one or the other. other.
Australia’s largest media companies, News Corp. Rupert Murdoch and Nine Entertainment, have stated that they believe payments should be in the hundreds of millions of dollars per year.
Google and Facebook, backed by the U.S. government and major internet architects, have said the scheme would significantly weaken their business models and the true workings of the internet.
Facebook told a Senate inquiry into the proposed code that it would stop allowing users to post links to Australian news if it becomes law.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Australian officials last week to lobby against the move.
News organizations around the world have ruined their businesses with the loss of advertising dollars that once flowed to their newspapers but are now heavily captured by the major platforms. digital.
Thousands of journalist jobs have been lost and a number of news outlets have been shut down in Australia alone over the past decade.
Both Facebook and Google have made sure they are willing to pay publishers for news through licensing agreements and commercial negotiations, and the two have signed multi-million dollar deals with news organizations around the world. the world.
Google told the Senate inquiry that the bargaining code should focus on enabling such negotiations, but rejected the idea of a mandatory “final offer”.
Microsoft is already partnering with Australian news publishers to license content for the MSN platform and Smith said the company was not afraid of operating under a media bargaining code.
“One thing is clear: while other tech companies may be threatening to leave Australia, Microsoft will never be threatened like that,” he said.