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0 pointsgraeme2y ago0 comments

You generally can't force someone to do business with another company. You can tax a company and give that company to another organization. But you can't force google to run google news in a given jurisdiction.

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chroma2y ago· 1 in thread

That may be mostly true in the US, but many other parts of the world are more authoritarian.

For example, Australia passed a law forcing Google to negotiate with news publishers regarding payment.[1]

When France passed a law requiring that Google pay news sites for linking to them, Google tried to stop linking to those sites. In response, France sued Google for half a billion dollars for antitrust violations.

1. https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/25/after-facebooks-news-flex-...

graemeOP2y ago

Facebook and Google pulled out of news after that law was passed. They only returned when Australian publishers agreed to negotiate outside the law.

For France, the devil is in the details. Google has agreements to fund news in many countries. This is generally a bribe it pays publishers not to pursue laws like this. Whereas the Canadian law seeks fairly unlimited payments.

So the question in the French case is how much Google could actually be forced to pay. It sounds like they can still accept an unreasonable deal.

https://www.politico.eu/article/french-competition-authority...

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