The press passes the bill to Google and Facebook

It's a historic complaint from news companies: Google and Facebook have been benefiting for years from being able to bundle and link to pieces of journalism produced by other companies, and in the meantime, they have built a duopoly in digital advertising, taking revenue away from those others. companies, destroying the economy of journalism and leading to thousands of layoffs in the sector.

The debate has come to the fore after the Australian government introduced a bill that seeks to have Facebook and Google share their profits with local media companies.

The legislation, which is expected to be passed by Parliament in the coming weeks, requires tech companies to pay for the news they offer on their platforms.

It invites them to sign individual agreements with the media and, if they do not reach them, it forces them to go to an arbitration mechanism.

The two technology companies, argue the promoters of the initiative, benefit from offering quality information.

The more quality informational content there is on their platforms, and the more they promote it, the less room there will be for misinformation and conspiracy theories that undermine their reputation around the world.

The Australian initiative offers a pattern to be studied by countries that are considering how far they can intervene in the balance between the power of Silicon Valley and the sovereignty of parliaments.

It has elevated the debate on Big Tech regulation to a new level, and it has opened deep cracks in the Internet sector.

The two main affected tech companies, Google and Facebook, fought hard to combat the legislation, but the Australian government stood firm.

When the legislation became inevitable, the two giants reacted in opposite ways.

Google unveiled on Wednesday a global agreement signed with News Corp, Rupert Murdoch's company, which owns two-thirds of Australian newspapers, as well as major newspapers in the United States

(The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post)

and the United Kingdom. Kingdom

(The Sun, The Times).

This is one of several agreements that it has recently signed with different media, yielding to the demands of the publishers.

Murdoch has been in this fight for years, and the influence of the Australian magnate in the conservative government of Scott Morrison is an element that explains why the oceanic country is at the forefront of this fight.

In a press release, News Corp celebrated its "victory" in a "quixotic crusade," and defended that the agreement "will have a positive impact on journalism around the world."

Facebook, on the other hand, announced hours later that it refused to enter.

He argued that Australian law goes too far, and decided to remove all links to news from his platform in Australia.

"The bill fundamentally misunderstands the relationship between our platform and the publishers who use it to share their news content," William Easton, Facebook's Deputy Director for Australia and New Zealand, wrote in a statement.

“It presented us with a tough choice: try to comply with a law that ignores the reality of this relationship, or stop allowing news content on our services in Australia.

With heartache, we opted for the latter ”.

Facebook already pays several media outlets for offering their information on their news tag.

But what the Australian Conservative Government wants is that these agreements do not depend on the will of the companies, but that they are obliged by law to pay.

The idea that each country adopts similar legislation, forcing to negotiate with each publisher or to adhere to the prices that each arbitration mechanism considers fair, worries the technological ones.

For years, Facebook and Google have been reluctant to pay publishers, claiming that their platforms help send many readers to journalism that would otherwise be lost on less-visited newspaper websites.

As the crisis in the media intensified, in contrast to the buoyant results of technology companies, the responsibility of platforms to financially support content creators began to be considered more seriously.

This, added to the need for quality journalism amid criticism for the misinformation that circulates on their platforms, led Facebook and Google to start paying, through various low-value and low-impact programs, to the media that they provided the news.

With their different reaction to the Australian initiative, the two giants who until now walked hand in hand have shown the different way in which they view journalism in their respective businesses.

For Google, which aspires to be the organizer of global information, news is a central element.

Facebook, on the other hand, sees them as just one more element, added to the other photos, videos, memes or texts that the users of the social network share.

But the power pulse that both companies have fought with the Australian government gives arguments to those who accuse them of monopolistic practices.

Aspiring competitors take note, too.

Microsoft, with Bing a small piece of pie in the quasi-monopoly search industry, saw Google's initial resistance as an opportunity to "combine good business with good causes," in the words of its president, Brad Smith.

They announced that if Google left Australia, they would stay.

"Within 24 hours, Google was on the phone with the prime minister, saying they really didn't want to leave the country," Smith explained on a company blog.

In the same blog entry, the president of Microsoft went even further and called for similar actions in his own country: “The United States should not oppose a creative Australian proposal that strengthens democracy by requiring technology companies to support a free press. .

Instead, I should copy it, ”he said.

Silicon Valley tech companies have become corporate giants of unheard of power, profoundly influencing the way information is consumed and distributed.

Many countries are considering the damage that Google, Facebook and other technology companies have inflicted on their media ecosystem.

The Canadian government has supported the Australian initiative, and is expected to promote similar legislation in the coming months.

The initiative is being watched with extreme interest also in Brussels, where European authorities are working on new laws to regulate the sector.

And in the United States, where the need to regulate Big Tech is one of the few issues that raises consensus between the two major parties, there are at least three open antitrust investigations into the impact of Google and Facebook on the news and industry sectors. advertising.