TLTP
\nCANBERRA
\nA Google executive said on Friday that a proposed Australian law to make digital platforms pay for news was unworkable and its proposed arbitration model was biased toward media businesses.
\nGoogle Australia and New Zealand Managing Director Mel Silva made her first public comments on the details of the
\nproposed legislation since it was introduced to Parliament last week.
\nThe so-called News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code would force Google and Facebook to compensate Australian news media for the journalism that they link to.
\n\u201cIt forces Google to pay to show links in an unprecedented intervention that would fundamentally break how search engines work,\u201d Ms Silva said in a statement.
\nIf a platform and a news business couldn\u2019t agree on a price for news after three months of negotiations, a three-member arbitration panel would be appointed to make a binding decision for payment.
\nSilva said \u201cbinding arbitration within the code could be a reasonable backstop \u2014 so long as the arbitration model is fair.\u201d
\nHowever, the proposed arbitration model was \u201cskewed to the interests of one type of business only,\u201d Ms Silva said, referring to the media.
\nGoogle said it had provided a better model with Google News Showcase. The tech giant is paying participating publishers to provide paywalled content to News Showcase users through the model that it launched in October.
\n\u201cBy imposing final-offer arbitration with biased criteria, it encourages publishers to go to arbitration rather than reaching an agreement,\u201d Silva said of the government\u2019s model.
\nMeanwhile, A coalition of ten US states led by Texas have filed an antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet\u2019s Google, accusing the tech giant of abusing its monopolistic power and colluding with Facebook to rig advertising auctions.
\nIn their lawsuit, filed at the US District Court in Texas, the states claim that Google struck an \u201cunlawful agreement\u201d with Facebook as soon as the company realized in 2017 that Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s social network could be a powerful rival in online advertising.
\nAccording to the complaint, the deal \u2013 codenamed after a \u2018Star Wars\u2019 character (it is not clear which one, as the name itself was redacted in the text) \u2013 was meant to kill the competition.
\nIn exchange for Facebook\u2019s backing down from header bidding, Google allegedly gave the tech rival information and speed \u2013 among other advantages \u2013 in the ads auctions that Google runs for publishers\u2019 mobile app advertising inventory each month in the US.
\n\u201cGoogle is a trillion-dollar monopoly brazenly abusing its monopolistic power, going so far as to induce senior Facebook executives to agree to a contractual scheme that undermines the heart of the competitive process,\u201d Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said as he introduced the lawsuit.
\nHe added that the Silicon Valley tech behemoth is destroying the free market as it is \u201cessentially trading on \u2018insider information\u2019 by acting as the pitcher, catcher, batter and umpire, all at the same time.\u201d
\nThe ten states demand a jury trial and want the court to force Google to pay multiple fines if found guilty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
TLTP CANBERRA A Google executive said on Friday that a proposed Australian law to make digital platforms pay for news was unworkable and its proposed arbitration model was biased toward media businesses. Google Australia and New Zealand Managing Director Mel Silva made her first public comments on the details of the proposed legislation since it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162069,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"\n