Inside Google’s mothballed plans to quit search in Australia
Google’s threat to withdraw from Australia over laws that would force it to pay for new content was not an idle one – it even designed what users would see instead, internal emails filed in a major court case in the United States reveal.
A series of emails, used as evidence in the Justice Department’s major antitrust lawsuit against Google reveal the lengths the search giant was considering going to in a bid to avoid negotiating deals with Australian broadcasters and publishers.
Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai at the antitrust hearing into its Google subsidiary in late October. Bloomberg
In late 2020, months before it first publicly threatened to leave Australia, Google executives were discussing a “shut down” and preparing to tell users that search “isn’t available in Australia right now”. The documents are revealing as Google is threatening to withdraw from Canada, which intends to introduce a similar law this year.
The Justice Department is suing Google for using anticompetitive practices to “buy preferential treatment” for its search engine, maintaining a near 90 per cent share of the US market.
The trial has revealed Google spends $US26 billion ($40 billion) a year to keep its search engine as the default on popular devices made by Apple and Samsung.
The email discusses the withdrawal from Australia – a project with a redacted code name – in the context of how it would affect an impending new commercial search deal with South Korea’s Samsung.
“Don’t discuss [redacted] explicitly with Samsung prior to the AU shut down,” Google product manager Bryan Mao wrote in November 2020.
“There’s a confidential, Need to Know project called [redacted] that may affect Samsung. In short, due to a new law in Australia, Search
Read more on afr.com
