It is important to understand why a California Digital Company like Google, would become sensitive about having to pay for collecting proprietary information from other News Websites. Whilst News businesses basically operate their expenses and revenues based on the information they provide to readers, when a digital service aggregrates such information and presents it on their own website, the News website, is prevented from obtaining a customer, who reads the news on the Google website.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55760673
There are a few legal issues on this model:
1. Google is undertaking what is known as 'Data Scrapping' Cybercrime, where proprietary information from business websites, is produced to the readers as their own. This would indeed constitute a crime in the US as well as most of the world, such as Australia, as proprietary business data and a critical service that is being provided, is being 'hacked' by a third party operator, causing significant damages to the News business.
2. Google is also known to collect personal browsing data for individual users, in its cookies policies. Combining the information about what and where the user is browsing from the cookies, Google can then apply Artificial Intelligence methods, to selectively display content that may prevent the user from obtaining a 'full and fair' search result. This AI logic, can also be extended to profile users and allocate information selections, such that the user is influenced in a certain way, representing a political or economic preference - and at the mercy of Google. Such an act would constitute violation of personal data at the very least.
3. Google would be undertaking online 'Market Manipulation' of News providers, by selecting which and what news content is displayed when a user requests such information, subjected to the AI methods that is applied to a user, and the internal AI methods that it uses to display search results. Meaning, a website that contains important information, may not be displayed if it does not conform to such internal AI methods, leaving both the customer and the news provider stagnated, and an inefficient economic market, where the buyer and the seller is prevented from such a transaction.
Increasingly, under-regulated digital service providers are unleashing some kind of user services, that constitute severe breaches of law and order in most countries. It is about time that administrators and governments globally, meet and resolve such threats from these services, without the fear of any economic stalling, that maybe threatened by services such as Google.
The Australian Government never has, and never should, go down to such threats from terrorists or any service providers alike, to bring down the Australian economy in any ways.
(So, may God help the Queen!)
Regards,
Syamantak Saha
