Google experiments with burying commercial news

Google has taken the extraordinary step of trialling the suppression of search results that link to commercial news outlets, part of a campaign against the proposed News Media Bargaining Code, as the search giant claims the draft law will undermine the service it provides.

Why it matters: In a situation in which Google is arguing that Australia should not legislate to let commercial publishers bargain collectively with platform companies, flexing its singular power over them is a strange move, given that it goes a long way in showing why publishers have a case for levelling the playing field.

Details:

• Reporting in the Australian Financial Review found that for some users commercial news sites like The Guardian and The Australian were affected for a small fraction of search users.
• State-owned ABC appears to have been unaffected.
• Google, noting that it runs “tens of thousands” of experiments each year, said that it is committed to finding a “workable” code.
• The reason for the experiments is to “measure the impacts of news businesses and Google search on each other”.
• It also pointed out the value it provides to publishers, which can also be read as the publisher revenues that Google effectively controls.
• The code is currently under a Senate committee review.