251–260 of 437 posts
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Not indexing news content in order to avoid submitting to the proposed new law is itself prohibited under the new law.
So Google will either pay up, or exit Australia long enough until the law gets overturned - whichever is cheaper. For massive companies like Google, presenting them with silly fines and taxes is like a truck finding a little speed bump.
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How do you draw the conclusion that the Australian people want this behaviour? As far as I can tell none us want this but once elected the politicians fail to action what the people want. Over and over again...
For any given political view espoused by members of a major political party, if you think "none of us" want it, you need to get out of your bubble. There's a lot of voters out there who are quite okay with the government doing what they think needs to be done to ensure national security.
Given evidence to the contrary they prefer to imagine it as a lie.
So it's not correct today that they condone anything the people in charge are doing for national security they repress the existence of the things they don't condone.
Open comment from an Australian to google: "Pay your f#$king tax like the rest of us or shut the f%$ck up." This comment stands apart from any and all implications of their special interest policy pleadings above which are all pretty tedious in comparison. Google don't pay tax for profit made selling in Australia. To hell with them and literally any case they have to make.
I think you missed the whole point of this letter. Let me clarify:
"Oi mate, the government wants to force us to fuck you royally. We don't want to. Please help stop yourself getting fucked. Cheers, cunt."
Open comment from an Australian to google: "Pay your f#$king tax like the rest of us or shut the f%$ck up." This comment stands apart from any and all implications of their special interest policy pleadings above which are all pretty tedious in comparison. Google don't pay tax for profit made selling in Australia. To hell with them and literally any case they have to make.
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I'm wondering if this assertion comes from some kind of "search bubble" among developers of these tools.
If adding widgets to products caused the product revenue to double, then you probably wouldn't call it a bubble.
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interesting. it seems to me that if Google really wanted to influence Australian public opinion, they have far more sophisticated ways to go about it than this clumsy attempt at PSA outreach slash fear mongering. It's almost as if they need to be seen to be taking some responses to the media payment legislation but they don't really care. That's what's interesting to me. I wonder why they would not care. perhaps beca…
Google's entire business depends on being squeaky clean. If they ever got caught doing "sophisticated" opinion influencing, they'd lose half their value overnight as customers switched to alternatives. And then every democratic government would join in with a serious kicking, given their elections are so vulnerable to said influencing. I think Facebook sails very close to the wind here, but my impression is that Goog…
Yes Google is a big org, their business is problematic, and they do crap at times. But I think their mentality is much more less Machiavellian than Facebook.
I believe the "do no evil" as a compass, they might not always adhere to that as you or me may perceive it (after all, it is rather subjective), but it does seem to somewhat guide their actions.
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I think ssss11's point was, if no matter who you vote for they do the same dastardly things, and the political system is set up to lock out newcomers not allied with either major party, then there's no way within the system to stop something by voting.
Yeah thats right, I think in Australia your vote basically means nothing.
For the lower house, we've had many years of the balance of power in the hands of a small number of independents who get an outsized voice.
Yes, if you live in an non-swing electorate, that is strongly held by the incumbent, then you could argue that your vote doesn't matter, but only because there are more people voting for something else. Isn't that how things are meant to work?
This does make a case for increased competition in both the search and news space though.
Google evil etc etc aside, they have been decent custodians of their users data. I don't really want to trust Google, but they behave much better than the Australian government, who recently admitted they spy on their citizens [0], can coerce citizens and companies to install backdoors into their companies software [1]. I trust Murdoch less than the government, and much much less than Google. Remember when Murdoch in…