New Delhi: Tech giant Google on Friday threatened to shut down its search engine unavailable in Australia if the country implemented its plans to make tech giants pay for news.
According to the report, The company has cautioned that its 19 million users in Australia would face degraded search and YouTube experiences if it would be forced to pay for news content.
According to the report of PTI, Scott Morrison, Australian Prime Minister has also hit back at the tech behemoth, saying ‘we don’t respond to threats’.
The Australian PM’s comments were a result of Mel Silva, the Managing Director of Google Australia and New Zealand, telling a Senate inquiry into the bill that the new rules would not be workable.
Senators quoted Silva as saying that 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.
According to Silva, the tech giant is willing to pay a wide and diverse group of news publishers for the value they added, but not under the rules as proposed by the Australian government which included payments for links as well as snippets.