Google looks to withdraw out of the Australian market if a new law that controls its relationship with news publishers goes ahead.

The Australian government is looking to discuss a new law where tech giants should recompense for the news that is shared on their platform or that shows up in search. This new law would state that a written contract be made with every news organization, although Google says this cannot be done.

It is unknown how much Google wants Australia to pay and if Google cannot reach a conclusion as to the final payment with a news outlet then the matter would be left to a judge. The regional director, Mel Silva said, “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”. Looking at other ways in which Australia can do without Google, it seems there is a very thin line of any other alternatives since Google has about 90 – 95% of the search engine in market in Australia.

The few options that exist are, ‘Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo’ but google still remains the biggest search engine used. Although the alternative search engines work just fine, this can affect the people of Australia because they would be greatly limited to what they can access online.

Rufaro Sihle Muyanga.