Google Australia's warning to Australians

[bluescope]

Google Australia has issued an open letter to Australians warning about a new Australian Government proposed law which Google says will severely affect how Australian's get their search results and impact on their data privacy in YouTube and elsewhere (the pot calling the kettle black, but anyway...)

https://about.google/intl/ALL_au/google-in-australia/an-open-letter/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mealbar-p2

 

Open letter to Australians

We need to let you know about new Government regulation that will hurt how Australians use Google Search and YouTube.

A proposed law, the News Media Bargaining Code, would force us to provide you with a dramatically worse Google Search and YouTube, could lead to your data being handed over to big news businesses, and would put the free services you use at risk in Australia.

The way Aussies search every day on Google is at risk from new regulation

You’ve always relied on Google Search and YouTube to show you what’s most relevant and helpful to you. We could no longer guarantee that under this law. The law would force us to give an unfair advantage to one group of businesses - news media businesses - over everyone else who has a website, YouTube channel or small business. News media businesses alone would be given information that would help them artificially inflate their ranking over everyone else, even when someone else provides a better result. We’ve always treated all website owners fairly when it comes to information we share about ranking. The proposed changes are not fair and they mean that Google Search results and YouTube will be worse for you.

Your Search data may be at risk

You trust us with your data and our job is to keep it safe. Under this law, Google has to tell news media businesses “how they can gain access” to data about your use of our products. There’s no way of knowing if any data handed over would be protected, or how it might be used by news media businesses.

Hurting the free services you use

We deeply believe in the importance of news to society. We partner closely with Australian news media businesses — we already pay them millions of dollars and send them billions of free clicks every year. We’ve offered to pay more to license content. But rather than encouraging these types of partnerships, the law is set up to give big media companies special treatment and to encourage them to make enormous and unreasonable demands that would put our free services at risk.

This law wouldn’t just impact the way Google and YouTube work with news media businesses — it would impact all of our Australian users, so we wanted to let you know. We’re going to do everything we possibly can to get this proposal changed so we can protect how Search and YouTube work for you in Australia and continue to build constructive partnerships with news media businesses — not choose one over the other.

You’ll hear more from us in the coming days — stay tuned.

Thank you,
Mel Silva, Managing Director, on behalf of Google Australia
 

 

[Seafood]

Thanks Maz, is time for another search engine, I was using Copernic, perhaps I should go back to that.

[bluescope]

This legislation hasn't been enacted into law yet, and will certainly be opposed in the Senate, but we will see what happens. It's hard to imagine what this wretched government is up to - with so much on its plate; it probably wants to distract from some of its actions but at the same time re-assure Rupert Murdoch that they are still his willing slaves.

People - Copernic is good as SF says above. Don't forget  DuckDuckGo. There are others. I'm not sure there is a real alternative to YouTube.

Of course, using a good VPN is a great alternative so you could access Google Search and YouTube in the USA or Britain/Europe. In this respect I recommend NORD VPN. It is powerful, has very many servers all over the world most of which I have found to be very fast and very reliable, and is reasonably priced.

Recommended tip: as the same goes for securty software it makes no sense to use a cracked or hacked VPN - pay for a license. Think about it: if your preferred security software or VPN cannot detect that they have been hacked/cracked, what good are they with other threats?