Welcome to "The Outwrite Podcast". This article is published on www.theoutwrite.com by Varun Singh Rajput. The tension between Australia’s federal government and the tech giant Google continue to tighten over the newly proposed media code.

As per the “Pay for News” law, Google will have to pay the news publishers for there content which would lead to major revenue loss for the company. Following this, they have threatened to block the search engine services for entire Australia.

“If this version of the Code were to become law it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia,” Google Australia and New Zealand VP Mel Silva told Australia’s Senate Economics Legislation Committee today.

The proposed code of conduct has been drawn up by the consumer-rights team at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and orchestrates the tech giants such as Google and Facebook on how to share the revenue generated from using content produced by all the news platforms.

As per Google, part of the proposed code would require them to pay media organizations for showing links and snippets to news stories in its search results.

In a video statement posted to YouTube, Silva says this requirement goes against how Google Search functions, and that “paying for links breaks the way search engines work”.

As per the VP, they have nothing against a new law but parts of the current proposed code is not at all healthy for there business.

“This provision in the code would set an untenable precedent for our business, and the digital economy,” she said in a statement.

In response to Google’s statements made in the Senate, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has shot back, stating in a press conference today that the “we don’t respond to threats”.

Facebook is also in the ACCC’s radar with this particular law and similarly threatens to block there news sharing in Australia, too. Both companies are calling these blockages a “worst-case” scenario.

Well let’s see where this leads to, are they going to find a  way to mitigate this situation or are up for war?

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