Imagine a world without Google, the search engine so pervasive it\u2019s the starting point for more than five billion queries a day. That\u2019s the reality facing Australia, where the tech giant is threatening to unplug its homepage in a standoff with the government.<\/p>\n
Google opposes a planned\u00a0law<\/a><\/strong> that would force the company and Facebook Inc. to pay Australian publishers for news content.<\/p>\n The Internet juggernaut\u2019s ultimatum to local lawmakers – change the legislation, or else – has left a digital vacuum hanging over a nation that essentially knows just one way to navigate the web. Google runs 95% of Internet searches in Australia.<\/p>\n Potential fallout from the spat goes far beyond Australia for Alphabet Inc.-owned Google, whose dominance of global advertising has made it a target for watchdogs worldwide.<\/p>\n If the company backs down in Australia, the pay-for-news law risks becoming a template for jurisdictions including Canada and the European Union that are following the quarrel and keen to shorten Google\u2019s lead.<\/p>\n But disabling what is arguably the world\u2019s most famous website would hand all of Australia to rivals, including Microsoft Corp.\u2019s Bing and\u00a0DuckDuckGo<\/a><\/strong>, which have failed to dislodge Google as the gateway to the web.<\/p>\n These search-engine competitors would suddenly have a playground for development and a foothold to advance on the global stage.<\/p>\n Software-engineering student Patrick Smith exemplifies Australia\u2019s Google dependency. The 24-year-old from Canberra said he sometimes racks up 400 Google searches a day to help with his studies, catch up on news and look up recipes.<\/p>\n Smith said his browser from the previous day shows 150 searches — in the space of just five hours.<\/p>\n \u201cThe prospect of Google search disappearing is frightening at best,\u201d Smith said. \u201cIt\u2019s quite reflexive of me to Google something, anything, that I\u2019m even mildly not sure of.\u201d<\/p>\n Searching for \u2018best beach Sydney\u2019 shows the variance in performance among Google\u2019s competitors. DuckDuckGo\u2019s first result was an ad for a hotel more than 1,000 kilometers away in Queensland, with Sydney beach reviews listed below a second ad link.<\/p>\n Search Encrypt<\/a><\/strong>, which touts its data-protection capability, said: \u2018It looks like there aren\u2019t any great matches.\u2019 Bing\u2019s initial suggestion was Bondi Beach Post Office. Only Google returned a real beach, Bondi, first up.<\/p>\n The world-first\u00a0legislation<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0will be considered by Australia\u2019s parliament from the week starting Feb. 15 after a key senate committee\u00a0recommended<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0Friday that the bill be passed.<\/p>\n \u201cThe government expects all parties to continue to work constructively\u00a0towards<\/span>\u00a0reaching commercial agreements,\u201d Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said in a statement welcoming the senate report.<\/p>\n The government says the local media industry — including Rupert Murdoch\u2019s News Corp. and Sydney Morning Herald-publisher Nine Entertainment Co. — has been bled of advertising revenue by the tech giants and should be paid fairly for content.<\/p>\n Google argues it drives traffic to their websites, and that being forced to pay to display snippets of news breaks the principle of an open Internet. It also opposes the law\u2019s final-offer arbitration model that determines how much it should pay publishers.<\/p>\n Facebook has said it may stop Australians from sharing news on its platform if the law is enacted, an unprecedented step.<\/p>\n Imagine a world without Google, the search engine so pervasive it\u2019s the starting point for more than five billion queries a day. That\u2019s the reality facing Australia, where the tech giant is threatening to unplug its homepage in a standoff with the government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":221903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[2798,167],"class_list":["post-386458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-australia","tag-google"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386458"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":386460,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386458\/revisions\/386460"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}World-First Legislation<\/h3>\n
Now read: Facebook asks iPhone users to opt into activity tracking<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"