Microsoft Attacks The Open Web Because It's Jealous Of Google's Success
from the stop-it dept
Lots of attention has been paid to the mess down in Australia with its news link tax "bargaining code", and Facebook's response to it, including the eventual caving. So now both Google and Facebook have effectively agree to pay a tax to Australia's largest media companies... for daring to send them free traffic. It's the most bizarre thing in the world. Imagine if every time TV stations ran an advertisement, they also had to pay the advertiser. That's what this is.
However, we should focus in a bit on Microsoft's role in all of this. First, before Google agreed to its deal and was threatening to shut down news links in Australia, Microsoft stepped in and said it would gladly support the law. This was so transparently greedy of the company. Basically, Microsoft has realized that it's failure to actually be able to compete in the marketplace means that it wants to support this kind of law knowing that one of two things will happen: (1) Google will bail out of a market, leaving it open to Microsoft or (2) it'll just cost its competitor Google a lot of money.
The fact that it also fucks with the basic concept of the open web and not having to pay to link doesn't seem to enter into Microsoft's calculus at all. This takes Microsoft back to the shameful era in which it paid some godawful amount of money to political trickster Mark Penn not to help Microsoft better compete, but to simply attack Google like a political candidate. This is classic political entrepreneurship rather than market entrepreneurship. It's a sign of failure, when you're not trying to actually innovate, but simply abusing the political process to hamstring competitors.
But, in this case, it's even worse, because it's not just Google and Facebook that get screwed, but the entire concept of the open web.
And it gets worse. Microsoft seems so positively giddy about how this all worked out in Australia, that it's now taken the campaign global. Microsoft's President, Brad Smith wrote a blog post calling for this policy to be adopted elsewhere. Incredibly, Smith seems to argue that the attack on the Capitol might not have happened if Google and Facebook were taxed this way globally. The whole thing is just... so obnoxiously dishonest. It bemoans the loss of "professional journalism" and blames it all on social media.
But that's garbage. Multiple studies have shown that Fox News was a bigger problem in spreading disinformation than social media. And, remember, that Fox News boss Rupert Murdoch is the main beneficiary of the Australian law. It's literally taking money from the less problematic spreader of disinfo and giving it to the more problematic one. But Smith/Microsoft act as if this is all for the good of society:
The ideas are straightforward. Dominant tech properties like Facebook and Google will need to invest in transparency, including by explaining how they display news content.
Even more important, the legislation will redress the economic imbalance between technology and journalism by mandating negotiations between these tech gatekeepers and independent news organizations. The goal is to provide the news organizations with compensation for the benefit derived by tech gatekeepers from the inclusion of news content on their platforms.
This has been Murdoch's framing all along and it's total bullshit. There is no "imbalance" here because there's nothing to negotiate over. You don't need to negotiate to link. It's a free thing, and as we saw when Facebook pulled its links, and all these news organizations started whining, it showed that those news organizations actually recognize they derive value from the free links. The whole thing is ridiculous.
And Smith tries to frame it as if it's protecting democracy and the American way. That's garbage.
These are now pressing questions for the Biden administration. Facebook and Google persuaded the Trump administration to object to Australia’s proposal. However, as the United States takes stock of the events on January 6, it’s time to widen the aperture.
The ultimate question is what values we want the tech sector and independent journalism to serve. Yes, Australia’s proposal will reduce the bargaining imbalance that currently favors tech gatekeepers and will help increase opportunities for independent journalism. But this a defining issue of our time that goes to the heart of our democratic freedoms. As we wrote in 2019, “The tech sector was born and has grown because it has benefited from these freedoms. We owe it to the future to help ensure that these values survive and even flourish long after we and our products have passed from the scene.”
The United States should not object to a creative Australian proposal that strengthens democracy by requiring tech companies to support a free press. It should copy it instead.
I'm an independent journalist. This isn't going to help me. There's no way in hell any of these solutions will ever involve us getting any money out of this, and if it did, then suddenly there would be all sorts of questions about whether or not we could even cover those companies fairly, since they'd be a key source of revenue. How the hell does this help democracy?
And, then it gets even worse. Soon after, Microsoft announced that it was teaming up with EU publishers to seek a similar link tax in the EU.
Microsoft is teaming up with European publishers to push for a system to make big tech platforms pay for news, raising the stakes in the brewing battle led by Australia to get Google and Facebook to pay for journalism.
The Seattle tech giant and four big European Union news industry groups unveiled their plan Monday to work together on a solution to “mandate payments” for use of news content from online “gatekeepers with dominant market power.”
They said they will “take inspiration” from proposed legislation in Australia to force tech platforms to share revenue with news companies and which includes an arbitration system to resolve disputes over a fair price for news.
Some people are seeing through all of this -- and even Inc. Magazine called out Microsoft as "the ultimate troll" for its stance here. But this isn't a game. This isn't just politics. This is about the nature of the open web.
And Microsoft is singing happily along as it helps regulators and old, failed publishers around the globe break the open web. All because they're jealous of Google.
It's not difficult to see the path this is likely to head down, and it's bad. A few countries force Google/Facebook to pay these old school publishers. Then, basically everyone else on the web notices this and says "hey, how come they get to link to me for free? Shouldn't they be paying me too?!?" And then, one by one, we'll just hear of every failed and flopped industry demanding free money from the companies that actually innovated. The music industry must be so excited. Book publishing? Absolutely. What about boxed software providers (hi, Microsoft!).
Basically, every industry that failed to adapt and innovate online is likely to go running to government demanding payment. And the very nature of the open internet ceases to exist the way it has for the past three decades. It's a terrible, terrible idea, and it was ridiculous that it went ahead in Australia. But Microsoft is an actual tech company, which should know better, but it's trollish obsession with Google beating Microsoft in the market means it's willing to toss out the open internet if it thinks it will harm Google.
It's shameful and disgusting.
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Filed Under: antitrust, australia, brad smith, competition, links, negotiations, news tax, paying for links
Companies: facebook, google, microsoft
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I am a tax but do not call me that
I am presently in the process of informing the Australian government of the Bargaining Code they will need to pay me if they want me to read their dreg. So far I have not received a reply.
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I wondered who Microsoft had to blow to get off the "big tech" hit list.. guess it was murdoch
"these tech gatekeepers" is a sad joke of disinformation. There aren't even any gates to keep. You can go straight to any site you want, you could before whatever big tech company you are talking about and you still can. "These tech" are popular because of the service they provide not because anyone needs to go through them to get elsewhere. No one needs to go through them to get elsewhere, thats just a lie.
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You know another "Dominant tech property"?
Microsoft
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Re:
Yeah, I'm thinking this sort of logic just about makes the case that Microsoft ought to pay everyone who uses the Windows OS.
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https://dataswamp.org/~john/assets/writings/library/microsoft/IhateMS.html
should be updated to include their latest shenanigans and utter failures like Bing.
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Could the law in Australia be taken down in court?
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Definitely.
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Microsoft's efforts on this front seem to be a part of a long-game strategy they've been pursuing for years.
For example, years ago when Microsoft tried to copy the Google Books project, which briefly provided much better access to books, making it easy to search content on line and find sites where books could be bought or downloaded. It involved a giant investment by Google in scanning millions of books. Microsoft first tried to set up a competitive service, but ended that after a few months of zero ROI.
Instead, they spent on financing political attacks and legal challenges to Google Books, resulting in Google suffering a huge PR hit and ultimately a court decision saying, copyright law required that books be unavailable anywhere rather than a compromise solution that would have allocated revenues from "orphan" books (where rights holder can't be found) to working publishers and authors. So, less books available, but great for Microsoft as it worked on building its reputation as protector of rights against supposedly rapacious competitors.
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If you can't innovate, litigate
They're too incompetent and/or lazy to actually compete with the likes of Google and Facebook so they buy off and 'nudge' politicians to undermine the competition, and/or cheer on those that are doing so at other's behest. Who ever could have seen that coming.
That said if it really is time to crack down on tech giants then it seems another name needs to be added to that list, and any country that want to put the screws to Google and Facebook should add Microsoft to the list. After all they already said they'd be happy to pay the extortion, might as well take them up on it to better help 'journalism'.
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Their what?
"Microsoft's roll"?
smdh
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Re: Their what?
I noticed that too. I see some manner of typos fairly frequently here, but also everywhere else. Autocorrect is a hell of a drug.
But anyway...
However, we should focus in a bit on Microsoft's roll in all of this.
[reads rest of article]
Yeap, that is exactly how Microsoft rolls.
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MS blaming?
So MS thinks this might help them?
And if the reality, FB and Google, May have helped, abit. But Finding more on CABLE TV(if you want to point a finger) is about to happen. There is already a list of those on trumps side, AND filling his mouth with words, He may not of said, the way they think.
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Google and Facebook will regret caving in to extortion. Microsoft on the other hand can only wish anyone thought it relevant enough to extort.
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bing is a search engine,it will be liable for fees for showing links,
as much as google .
this is like ford asking for extra taxs, fees on electric cars, to attack tesla.
at this point attacking the open web used for media ,music information
and business is a very bad strategy for any tech company.
of course maybe they think no one uses bing for search ,
so what does it matter anyway if it hurts google.
its like when thev film industry wanted to ban vcrs ,
when you attack services that millions of people use you are sending a negative
message to potential customers.
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Re:
Some are saying the law only covers Google and Facebook.
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Re: Re:
must be a bot
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Re: Re: Re:
To be fair, even if it's a bot, they do have a good point. Bing, while not widely used much, is a search engine, so it could be likely they'll still get aimed at.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210302/17264946349/microsoft-attacks-open-web-because-jealou s-googles-success.shtml#c356
And even if that isn't the case, it still can happen.
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Re: Re:
Unless the EU decides to sneak a link tax on Microsoft without them knowing.
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I agreed with everything you said till I watched a comedian talk about it. His take on the this was, when you query google/facebook about a news story you get several articles with enough text to get a gist of the story and you can click thru to googles photos. Seems like for a lot of people this is enough as 50% NEVER clickthru to the news site. So they are getting their news thru google/facebook without using a newssite
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Bullshit. When Google stopped doing that snipping and linking in other countries, the news media freaked out.
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"His take on the this was, when you query google/facebook about a news story you get several articles with enough text to get a gist of the story"
...and if publishers don't like that, they can either a) use the tools available to them to stop crawlers getting the snippet text and/or block crawlers entirely, or b) start investing in actual journalism again so that their stories consist of more than rewriting of AP feeds, gossip about Twitter posts and clickbait headlines that have no substance in the body of the article.
They have all the tools to counteract this at their disposal. They just refuse to use them, and have in fact gone the other direction, reducing the value of the content of their output with decades of lowering standards. No wonder they're not getting as much money for floor scrapings as they used to for steak.
"Seems like for a lot of people this is enough as 50% NEVER clickthru to the news site"
Which is analogous to physical media days, where most people never paid for the newspaper. This is nothing new.
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Re:
That still doesn't change that these publishers make a buttload of money off Google's and Facebook's links, in the form of extra site traffic.
And to put what others have said in a more succinct way: maybe these media houses should just "git gud".
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50% of 10,000 is still more than 90 or 100% of 1,000
One need only look at past examples where Google was smart enough to stand up to the extortion and the tantrums that resulted to see that even if that were true the publishers still get way more from Google than Google gets from them and they know it, so if anything they should be paying Google/Facebook if money absolutely must change hands.
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if Google left my country, I wouldn't use Bing if the fate of the world depended on it.
Besides we all know Bing is a fake search engine that just grabs the first 3-5 pages of google results and shuffles them a bit.
Everytime google changes its system, Bing goes down until they can scrape results again. It's happened hundreds of MILLIONS of times.
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Re:
"if Google left my country, I wouldn't use Bing if the fate of the world depended on it."
Thankfully, there's more than 2 choices.
"Everytime google changes its system, Bing goes down until they can scrape results again. It's happened hundreds of MILLIONS of times."
Citation needed, although that would explain why Bing's uptake is so low despite MS literally bribing people to use it.
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nothing like a little EXTORTION!
it is ether cave to the BS law and get some money or leave and get nothing!
yet some seem to think that they deserve free money for nothing!
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To be exactly fair
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210302/17264946349/microsoft-attacks-open-web-because-jealous-go ogles-success.shtml#c193
You do have to realize that while true, Microsoft might be exempt from the link tax,it could be possible that Australia or the EU decide to sneak a link tax on Microsoft without them knowing.
I mean, they have Bing which is a search engine, and I have doubt that Australia or the EU would even spare a search engine, even if it's a rival to Google.
It could be me, though.
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