In Australia, Google blocks access to media websites “on a trial basis”

An action that is considered a “test”. In the wake of the conflict between Canberra and the digital giants, Google will no longer allow some Australians access to the country’s news sites to force the media to pay for their content. Australia wants to force Google and Facebook publishers to use their content, with fines of hundreds of millions of dollars for violations. This restriction, which will come into effect this year as opposed to internet giants, will be a world first. This applies to Facebook’s “news feed” and Google searches, which are the two richest and most powerful companies in the world.

An Australian financial study has found that Google blocks access to content from several major Australian media sites for a limited number of search users, including the Australian Guardian daily and News Corp newspapers. Instead, they refer to the content of old links or other sites. A Google spokesman said the change was expected to end in early February, one of the “tens of thousands of tests” being carried out on the platform.

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“We are currently conducting tests to meet 1% of Google search engine users in Australia, which will measure the relationship between newsgroups and Google search,” he said in a statement. “In 2018, the value of the football we brought to news publishers through SEO alone is estimated at an 8 218 million (9 139 million),” he said.

Australian Finance Minister Josh Friedenberg has downplayed the move, saying Google and Facebook should not prevent Australians from accessing local information. “Digital giants need to focus on delivering original content and not blocking it,” he said Thursday (January 15).

The Australian initiative is facing a serious economic crisis by the media around the world, with advertising revenue now being captured mainly by internet companies. In Europe, the “neighborhood right” to allow newspaper publishers to pay for content used on online sites was introduced by European authorities in 2019 and is now to be used by member states.

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