Google Warns Australians it Really Doesn't Want to Pay for News (gizmodo.com.au) 114
Below its home page's search bar, Google is now warning everyone in Australia ominously that "The way Aussies search every day on Google is at risk from new Government regulation."
For more emphasis, Google even added the "hazard sign" symbol — a yellow triangle with an exclamation point, reports Gizmodo. "And in case you missed that, the website has also added a famously popular pop-up prompt that comes up during a search." After a year and a half of investigating, the ACCC, affectionately known as Australia's consumer watchdog, published a report last year that found that digital platforms had significant bargaining powers. News publishers, on the other hand, were a lot less powerful and this imbalance had significant adverse affects... In April this year, the Australian government asked Australia's consumer watchdog, the ACCC, to create some rules for a negotiation between news publishers and tech platforms... It laid out a process for negotiation and requirements that the platforms give more information to publishers...
In the letter, Google's ANZ Director Mel Silva claims that the code places free services — like Search, Gmail, Youtube — "at risk", seemingly implying that these services will be affected or may be discontinued if the draft code goes through. "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," she wrote...
In adding these warnings, the company is using its real estate on Australia's most visited website as a way to push back against negotiations that could force it to pay for its dominance.
UPDATE (8/17/2020): "The open letter published by Google today contains misinformation..." responds the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
For more emphasis, Google even added the "hazard sign" symbol — a yellow triangle with an exclamation point, reports Gizmodo. "And in case you missed that, the website has also added a famously popular pop-up prompt that comes up during a search." After a year and a half of investigating, the ACCC, affectionately known as Australia's consumer watchdog, published a report last year that found that digital platforms had significant bargaining powers. News publishers, on the other hand, were a lot less powerful and this imbalance had significant adverse affects... In April this year, the Australian government asked Australia's consumer watchdog, the ACCC, to create some rules for a negotiation between news publishers and tech platforms... It laid out a process for negotiation and requirements that the platforms give more information to publishers...
In the letter, Google's ANZ Director Mel Silva claims that the code places free services — like Search, Gmail, Youtube — "at risk", seemingly implying that these services will be affected or may be discontinued if the draft code goes through. "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," she wrote...
In adding these warnings, the company is using its real estate on Australia's most visited website as a way to push back against negotiations that could force it to pay for its dominance.
UPDATE (8/17/2020): "The open letter published by Google today contains misinformation..." responds the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
Calling Bullshit on Google (Score:1, Insightful)
When I said I wanted to live in a Cyberpunk universe I meant going into space, cool vr stuff, and getting to become a cyborg. Didn't want the "Corporations have more power than national governments" to go along with it.
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Why can't both of them have all the power [theonion.com]? That way everyone can be disenfranchised in our glorious Cyberpunk future.
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Corporations easily start to act like authoritarian or even totalitarian governments if they get powerful enough. When you get things like corporate towns, with corporate schools, corporate stores, corporate hospitals and so forth the lines start to get really blurry.
The adage that Power tends to corrupt isn't limited to a particular group. It can happen everywhere where power and influence are allowed to be consolidated by a relatively small group that lacks accountabili
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Problem for those corporations by the time they are arseholey enough to try to pull that off publicly, they have normally been arseholes with regard to exploiting their customers, and the popularity and glossy shine have started to fade. Nett, result, they end up promoting what they were seeking to oppose because the people really want their government to stick it to them, even to the point where the people also miss out.
Personally I would prefer they stick it to them regarding those taxes Google cheats on
Re:Calling Bullshit on Google (Score:5, Insightful)
On a semi-related note I've always laughed at the notion of "the government should be run like a business" where the implication is that businesses are so much more efficient and rational.
OMG people, have you ever seen the way large corporations work? They are just as fraught with inefficiency, waste and bureaucracy as any government. Such is the nature of any large group of humans.
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Large corporations that get fat and lazy eventually cease to exist. They go bankrupt, get sold or have to re-invent themselves. Real large ones have slow deaths. Customers move on to a different provider of similar goods/services (or just stop buying the no longer needed good/service). Other companies rise up and replace the inefficient one. The general populace is not negatively impacted.
Governments just print more money and/or raise taxes. The more bloated and inefficient that government becomes, th
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Running government as a business can work when your country is primarily a single dense urban environment (e.g. Singapore), but tends to fall apart when you have rural areas that simply aren't cost-effective to provide services to. The discussion about privatizing postal service happens in Japan every other PM or so, but invariably collapses when it comes down to how one would provide a continuity of service to loss-making rural areas.
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I seriously hope the whole thing goes through, and fast. Gmail, gmail? Your fucking email app has something to do with paying news producers for content now???
of course it is at risk. Google doesn't give anything away for free, they do so by either cashing in on other peoples content or by cashing in on your information. Really this is just a stark admission from them that they know they are fucking everyone over to their corporate benefit.
Re: Calling Bullshit on Google (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, they're fucking over everyone so hard. If only websites could protect themselves with a 20 byte robots.txt file...
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a) The google web crawler is easy to spot, people would soon know if it disobays it.
b) Many pages are generated dynamically and it's pointless trying to crawl them, you'd end up in infinite loops. Might as well use the hints in robots.txt
c) Most people want Google to index their sites, they don't put up robots.txt for no reason so google might as well obey it.
d) What does google gain by ignoring it?
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In theory Google can trace your IP and send the mafia to your house to break your knees too. But just like your contrived scenario that isn't happening, the mafia also won't actually show up and kneecap you.
Re:Calling Bullshit on Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Your knee jerk "fuck you Google" reaction is misguided in this case. Did you think to look who is in the other corner? Let me give you a hint: it's Australian Media. Need a bigger hint? Rupert Murdock was born in Australia. OK, I'll lay it on the table, Murdock has over the years convinced the dumb fuck pollies here to grant him a near monopoly on the news media here. Now he has his back to the wall, and he wants them to pay the piper.
Here, let me quote some passages from the proposed act [accc.gov.au]:
So, unlike any other business on the planet, Rupert was advanced notice of when Google changes it's page rank, and free advice from Google on how to minimise the effects. A great lurk if you can get it I guess.
Or try this:
Eh, what? Rupert wants to Google to tell him what it collects about me, and then tell tell him how he can get your grubby hands on my private data? Good one Rupert.
And finally we have this gob smacker:
Translation: if you post a comment about one of their articles on Facebook, Google Groups or something, the news organisations want the ability to delete or edit it. Well, that's unique.
When it comes between choosing between Google and Murdock, you be stark raving nut's to take Murdock.
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It isn't just News Corp, it;s Nine and News Corp.
Nine owns the most popular TV Network, a large national radio network and bough Fairfax the second largest newspaper publisher.
News Corp owns Foxtel, the national cable network and is the largest publisher of newspapers (though it has shut down most of the regional papers due to Covid 19 losses).
The biggest news organisation is the ABC, a public broadcaster, but this legislation specifically bans Google from paying them anything for news, which is funded by t
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Same here, I would rather have Google over Murdoch any day.
At least Google doesn't use its front pages to spread lies, FUD and BS to try and influence the outcome of elections.
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Far left is not liberal it's authoritarian.
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Reading the bits you quoted none of it even seems to be new.
Details of how results are ranked have been public since the start. Not the inner workings but the broad criteria, e.g. if you set up a paywall your content gets down-ranked because people clicking the link obviously expect to be able to read it.
The stuff about user data use all has to be public in the EU because of GDPR. They have to tell you upon request exactly how they use your data and who they share it with.
The moderation tool bit only applie
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I despise Murdock as much as anyone but it seems like the real issue here is money.
Well. ... yeah.
Re: Calling Bullshit on Google (Score:2)
Chill, Scooter
https://youtu.be/vs5AzKNNSIE [youtu.be]
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Murdoch et al failed to adapt their business models, in the face of technological change. Now they want to be bailed out. I say let them all battle it out in the marketplace.
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paying news producers for content now???
lol @ "news producers." You mean "propaganda publishers."
No News is Good News - for FB and Google (Score:5, Interesting)
It is interesting the only force Google to discuss payments. Based on past history it will probably be "it would be a shame if Australia went dark..."
Earlier in 2020, French authorities ordered that Google pay media outlets in the country. Instead, it responded by removing any content that fell under the orders.
Similarly, Google News has been shut down in Spain since 2014 after the country’s legislators demanded Google pay up for displaying news media content.
“Legislation in Spain requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not,” a post by Google read.
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Legislation in Spain requires every Spanish publication to charge services like Google News for showing even the smallest snippet from their publications, whether they want to or not,” a post by Google read.
And since 1993 till today i am still reading all the news on the internet from the Spain.
Fuck You Google !
Re:No News is Good News - for FB and Google (Score:5, Interesting)
But look how it has worked out. The Spanish media didn't come crawling back to Google. In Brazil 90% opted out and claim to have seen a negligible drop in traffic.
https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
And then a few years later Google went crawling back to them with an offer to pay for the content.
https://alrigh.com/google-will... [alrigh.com]
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They didn't exactly go crawling back. They offered to pay some of the content providers, and they offered to pay them whatever they felt like paying (per TFA.)
Re:No News is Good News - for FB and Google (Score:5, Informative)
If you read through all the blurbs abut this it's clear that Google isn't paying for their news aggregation in general. What they are doing is paying for select high-quality content plus access to some pay-walled content.
Considering how everyone has phrased themselves when speaking about this it seems that it's Google that has set the tone after realizing they have to stave off politicians writing stupid laws. So, I wouldn't say they went crawling back - they threw a bone to some of the most vocal news corporations.
What people doesn't realize that this can actually cement Google's dominance even more if they start introducing subscription-services through their news aggregation from which they can extract real money by skimming a couple of % from the subscription-fees.
So anyone who thinks this is good news may well regret it down the line.
Re:No News is Good News - for FB and Google (Score:4, Informative)
The Spanish media didn't come crawling back to Google.
The very organisation that lobbied for the laws is currently lobbying against them. The media didn't go crawling to Google because they never crawled away in the first place. There's nothing to crawl back to, such is the wording of the Spanish law. On the flip side analysis has shown that while clickthrough traffic in Spain didn't decrease, visitor traffic plummeted by 50-80% depending on which article you read, i.e. the only people still visiting Spanish media sites were those who directly went there in in the first place and in the favour of the media's argument, people who visited a news site from Google never actually stayed in the first place. None the less there are active efforts by the media themselves to get the law reverted in Spain.
Now on the flip side in Germany where the application of their law is voluntary on a case by case basis, a large number of news organisations who opted to try and get a cut out of Google then decided to literally crawl back to them. The most classic example of this was Germany's biggest publisher Axel Springer who in 2013 finally got favourable laws passed for them that forced an opt-in requirement for Google's indexing. In 2014 Axel Springer infamously opted in most of the German news landscape back after a devastating drop in traffic.
A German consortium then tried to have their cake and eat it too only for VG Media (who also represented Axel Springer) to lose horribly after taking Google to court because they didn't want to obey the very law they lobbied for. Surprise surprise VG Media is now once again lobbying the government for new laws despite having laws passed in their favour already.
There are likely regional issues at play here though. This in no way invalidates the Brazil example, and doesn't necessarily forebode what's happening in Australia.
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IIRC there is a clause that says "you will be fined more if you try to take your ball and go home; you will toe the line".
Google could still simply pull out completely and basically say FU.
Google needs (Score:2, Insightful)
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When governments like those in Australia or Europe start making ridiculous unrealistic demands just cut them off.
They'll either come crawling back when they realized they fucked up, or they'll end up like China with horrible quality access to information and the Internet.
Re:Google needs (Score:5, Insightful)
They'll either come crawling back when they realized they fucked up, or they'll end up like China with horrible quality access to information and the Internet.
That's exactly the way they want it . . . they don't want informed citizens.
They want to control what their citizens can read.
But China isn't alone in wishing for that . . .
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> Currently google et al are basically sending local news providers bankrupt in many countries
So how come that the ones that lost out the most when Google pulled out of Spain was the smaller publications?
All studies I've come across so far all come to the same conclusion, aggregation services drive traffic to publications. In other words: without aggregation-services local news providers would be in even more trouble.
Here is a really good report from NERA what happened to the publications in Spain after
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China who Google do business with and have developed their own search software that works around the Chinese state porpoganda and censorship organs?
Yeah it would be really horrible if google stopped operating in a company just like they didn't do in China...
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Thinking that news site scraping improves the quality of the news is, well, deluded at best.
Re: Google needs (Score:2)
Australian here. Exactly what would we lose if google went away? Search engines, email and maps all have alternatives. Mobile phones are a bit tougher - handing Apple a monopoly probably isn't a good idea!
Hopefully the pinephone and others of its ilk will be successful, then Google could go ahead and pull out, and nothing of value would be lost.
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paying for copying news is reasonable though.
Re:Google needs (Score:5, Insightful)
As I see it, a news provider either wants the traffic from Google, or they do not.
If they do not, then a simple robots.txt file will make Google go away. No fuss, no bother.
If they do want the traffic, then they must see that traffic as being of benefit to them. So that's the value-add that Google currently brings to the table for them.
Getting money directly from Google along with the traffic is a form of double-dipping.
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Wasn't the original point of contention, several years back, that Google was scraping and displaying so much of the content that it wasn't necessary to click through, so traffic was falling?
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Contention yes, reality as discovered by Germany then Spain disproved it. Not being scraped killed of more traffic than scraping. The choice is how bad media sites want to be hit, they never believe it or learn from others till they've forced through these changes.
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Do you have a citation for that? Spanish media seems to have done OK.
In fact German media is getting paid by Google now so apparently it was worse for Google than it was for them.
https://alrigh.com/google-will... [alrigh.com]
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Would that extend to search engines taking a snippet of the web page and showing it to the people searching for it?
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paying for copying news is reasonable though.
Yes, it is reasonable. But that doesn't change the fact that it is impossible if you want a worldwide information network like Google. Imagine how many costs Google would have to pass on to users through fees or impossible levels of advertising when such payments spread worldwide.
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What a terrible world that would be for everyone, where a megacorporation uses its monopoly to fight off nation states.
Dude, don't ever study world history. It's monstrously worse when those in power can stop every little thing, used to get kickbacks.
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National Killswitch (Score:2)
Except that is not what is being proposed...It is about Australian businesses having every business over 150,000 in 3 years be a potential Facebook and Google.
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Google needs to think in terms of having a nation "kill switch" that allows them to cut off services to any one nation that passes laws so onerous that they cannot reasonably do business in that country.
They don't need to think about what they've already solved. Google has done it before and they will do it again. They've already cut off indexing news before when they've been subjected to onerous terms. They absolutely will do it again in Australia.
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I mean cutting off all services, going dark for a country, not just not indexing news.
That doesn't make any sense. Why cut off their nose to spite their face? They're still profiting from running the other services. Hell, they'll even pay something for news so long as it results in a net profit. They're not just going to pay any amount the media sites demand.
Further, shutting off their other services in the country means firing all their employees in that country. They went to the trouble of hiring them, so as long as they're making a profit, they're not going to throw that cost away.
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I mean cutting off all services, going dark for a country, not just not indexing news.
That doesn't make any sense. Why cut off their nose to spite their face? They're still profiting from running the other services. Hell, they'll even pay something for news so long as it results in a net profit. They're not just going to pay any amount the media sites demand.
Further, shutting off their other services in the country means firing all their employees in that country. They went to the trouble of hiring them, so as long as they're making a profit, they're not going to throw that cost away.
They should "cut off their nose" to save the rest of their body. It would send a message to the world that they are not going to be considered a cash cow for each country's businesses. Whatever they allow one country to do would spread worldwide and encourage other ways to squeeze cash out of Google. There would be no end. France wants to tax digital services for example, something that strikes directly at a company like Google. If Google doesn't make a stand and send a message, the countries of the world w
googles definition of "free" (Score:5, Interesting)
Internet arguing (Score:2)
Ironically in the context of this discussion. The old news media...was about advertising. Both exist on an advertising model, which in the case of Google...was cost free.
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Google is saying that these "services" are free to the users of their search engine. They conveniently forget to say that the users pay for these "free" services by providing Google with more information about them that it uses to better target them and sell advertising. Just because a user does not hand over cash does not mean that they do not pay.
Google can eat shit (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Google can eat shit (Score:4, Interesting)
No mod points, so I'll post a reply.
I agree completely on all points. The ACCC has given Australia one of the best consumer protection frameworks in the world, despite the repeated efforts of the current government and corporations to make it otherwise.
Re:Google can eat shit (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree that the ACCC does a good job most of the time (there are instances where they allowed mergers to go through that should have been blocked, JB Hi-Fi buying The Good Guys being a good example or the time they allowed Westpac to buy St George but in general they seem to do a good job even if sometimes the courts overrule them as in the TPG-Vodafone merger).
But in this case these new rules/laws (which are clearly driven by the LNP and their old mate Mr Murdoch) are not good for anyone other than the dinosaur media companies. If I had to pick between Google having more power and the dinosaur media companies like News Corp having more power I would pick Google no question (at least they don't use the front page of their websites to publish stories designed to influence the outcome of elections)
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In this case, isn't Google the consumer? Seems weird to task the consumer protection agency with coming up with rules against the consumer. It would be like if they told a credit card company "Look guys, your interest rates are too low. We want consumers to pay you more."
Not that I'm saying there's no role for regulation, I just don't see how applying consumer protection to this makes any sense at all.
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In this case, isn't Google the consumer?
No. No it isn't.
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The problem with the ACCC is that while every now and then, they do pursue headline cases, where I think it matters most, in day to day matters, they're almost completely absent, and a complaint will fall on deaf ears... if you're lucky... while certain politically favoured/protected industries *cough*the*banks*cough seem to have been able to run with a green light. This is less so the case in the EU, where certain national bodies will be more active at a lower level, rather than trying to maintain appearan
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Then in 2015 they established a newer refund policy that had more consistent rules.
Was that done because of the lawsuit? I can't say for sure. It could be just a post hoc fallacy to assume a causal connection. But it's awfully coincidental, don't you think?
EU law would allow Steam to have people agree to forfeit their right to claim a refund with the start of t
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Steam accepts refunds from everywhere
They do now. They didn't back 10 years ago when the case came up. You can thank the ACCC for a large number of knock on affects in the western world, because PR is a nightmare when you arbitrarily offer one country a better deal than another.
- The ACCC forced Steam to define a strict return policy and stick to it (as required by Trades Practices Act - Steam rolled this policy out globally.
- The ACCC forced Microsoft to honour warranty claims on XBox 360s with Red Ring of Death regardless of how far out of w
Murdoch (Score:2)
Has your news been limited?
Re:Google can eat shit (Score:4, Insightful)
the Australian federal government are a bunch of incompetent corrupt shitbags, but the ACCC I trust.
You're acting like they're infallible. They aren't.
You're acting like this move is reasonable. It isn't.
Companies have control over whether they are indexed by google. It involves some simple changes to the robots.txt file.
If news media wants to be in charge of how they are represented on a search engine they can create their own news search, disallow indexing by anyone else, and be in control. But then they would have to cooperate, and god forbid anyone do that. Instead, they'll just force google to do business on their terms, right? Only you can't do that, can you?
The news media needs google more than google needs them, because they are incapable of real cooperation. How is that google's fault?
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but the ACCC are solid
The ACCC are fantastic but they don't shit pure gold. Not everything they do always works out in the best interest of the people, and not everything they propose ends up *unadulterated* in the houses.
*ESPECIALLY* matters of media. The ACCC for all its regulatory might can do little in the face of Murdoch, and no doubt Murdoch has his fingers in this pie. Specifically the legislation being debated at present looks like it does precisely fuck all for consumers and in fact appears to concentrate even more powe
Re: Google can eat shit (Score:2)
If it's Google vs Uncle Rupert, here's hoping they obliterate each other. Both companies are utter shitbags. This is the first time ever I have cheered for the lawyers. Take em for another couple of million, lawyers :-)
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here's hoping they obliterate each other. Both companies are utter shitbags.
I'm glad you think so. Me. I don't want only a single smartphone platform that's locked down, a singled cloud office suite with 100% market share, a single smarthome platform, the loss of my cloud files, the loss of the best mapping and traffic prediction service bar none (to say nothing of my car's integration with a Google product), or my visual realtime translation service (I live in a country which speaks a language foreign to me). I actively enjoy the entertainment I get on Youtube, and honestly I woul
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OK, perhaps total obliteration is hyperbole, but shitbag behaviour by big corporations is what the ACCC is chartered to reduce, and I hope they are successful at reducing Google's power.
I'll grant you that Android is useful to prevent a monopoly on cloud office suites and smartphones (here's hoping that pinephone and their ilk are successful!) but the rest are on you. There are plenty of email providers, and cloud providers out there.
Austalia does this a lot (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't media companies OWE Google, rather than the other way around, since their news articles are being prioritized?
When you click on the Google News article, does it take you to the original site?
Google could just hide the media results and their traffic share would decrease.
Isn't this called cutting off your nose to spite your face?
Australia does this a lot:
eg import duties on books to protect the Australian book industry - End result - Borders and Angus Robertson go bust
eg luxury car tax - End result - Mitsubishi, Holden, Ford and Toyota pull out of Australia
eg eBike regulations - Australians don't get access to decent (750W) eBikes
eg GST on all imports to protect billionaire electronics retailers who claim foul (whilst not passing on forex rates)
eg crippled Amazon.com.au where almost anything you want isn't available. (and you can't ship from amazon.com or amazon.co.uk)
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Errr your facts are waaay off base.
Borders and Angus Robertson didn't go bust because of import duties, they went bust because chain bookshops all over the world went bust. Shit man Borders isn't even Australian.
The Luxury car tax didn't end any Australian manufacturing since the Australian plants produced very few luxury cars in the first place. If you want to play the blame game there look no further than Australia's high cost of labour and the free trade deal with Japan. I'll not make mention of the fact
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It costs more to collect GST on individual items worth less than $1000 or so than what it raises.
i.e. it wasn't worth it, so they didn't collect it.
Lobbying by some very rich individuals changed that. It still raises less than it costs, so it's effectively a subsidy for a handful of exploitative, overpriced businesses - reducing some of the value in bypassing Harvey Norman and JB and the other gatekeepers.
and there's still
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It costs more to collect GST on individual items worth less than $1000 or so than what it raises.
Only directly. Indirectly the costs of bypassing local business to avoid paying the costs was far higher. Not every tax is about making money for the government.
The GST is a terrible fucking tax, anyway. It's essentially a tax on being poor.
I take it you've never taken even a rudimentary economics course. GST is a consumption based tax. These taxes are the most economically efficient for societies on the whole as the market distortion they apply discourages consumption rather than discouraging production. The latter is generally quite bad for not only the economy but for product pricin
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> These taxes are the most economically efficient for societies
Except for transaction taxes like the Tobin tax or the (long-gone) Bank Account Debit tax.
They're MUCH more efficient than any consumption tax, and far harder for the rich to evade - that last part is why they're rare and why governments aren't allowed to implement them even if they want to. The corporate lickspittle side of politics will never want to disobey their masters, and those who aren't owned by corporations will be bombarded with s
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and you have the gall to accuse me of being economically ignorant?
if you think that qualifies as a "progressive tax" then you're a fucking idiot.
I'm sorry I didn't realise I was dealing with someone smarter than economists and all western nations along with most non-western ones. I humbly bask in your glory.
LOL. Go back to school.
G'day Galahs (Score:1)
The Dingo ate your news and there won't be no moolah.
Strewth, that Google is a bonzer bloke.
And now rack off!
we dont care (Score:1)
and how much is from sky/fox news? (Score:2)
and how much is from sky/fox news?
That's OK, there are alternatives (Score:1)
We don't have to use Google for any of this so if Google changes we can just go somewhere else. I already have!
They really dont want to pay for anything. (Score:2)
Go direct (Score:2)