Google threatens to shut down search in Australia (opens in new tab)

Can someone explain why on Earth news media worldwide is so adement on wanting commission for traffic to their sites? I mean, were I a search engine provider faced with this demand I would just say "Well I'm terribly sorry you feel that way, we will no longer feature you in search results" and let their viewership plummet. Same with social media, if someone demands commission on traffic towards their site I would just make it impossible to share links towards them. It's their loss, not one of Google or Facebook. It is however unfortunate how desperate publishers have gotten for revenue and I sympathise with them, but they're picking the wrong fights here. Journalism is important, both general and investigatory, and they have a massive job of figuring out monetization going forward to keep the lights on.

Using monopolistic power to influence legislative agendas.

It's time for big tech to be broken up.

Unfortunately, I think google has all the leverage here. I don't other industries will stand with the news orgs, and will pressure the govt. if they start losing revenue because google/fb isn't servicing australia.

That would be an interesting experiment to determine if DDG, Bing, and the like could be viable enough alternative. If not, it would be an waking call to think about it.