Microsoft's Bing may fill gap if Google pulls out search engine services: Australian PM

Microsoft Corp is ‘confident’ that its search product Bing can fulfil the potential gap in Australia if Google chooses to pull its search engine services over the new legislation that requires the tech giant to pay media outlets, said Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on February 1. As Australia introduced a new law that would force the search engine giant Google and social media heavyweight Facebook to negotiate payments to domestic media outlets whose content links drive traffic to their respective platforms, Morrison told the reporters in Canberra that he is in talks with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. 

The tech giants have already labelled the new legislation as ‘unworkable’ and Google even began ‘experimenting’ after saying that it would terminate its services in Australia having 94% of its search market. Amid the ongoing row, Morrison told the reporters, “I can tell you, Microsoft's pretty confident when I spoke to Satya.” He reportedly added, “We just want the rules in the digital world to be the same that exist in the real world, in the physical world.”

Recently, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on January 30 failed to convince the Australian lawmakers to change the policy that requires tech giants to pay news media outlets for content, Australia’s Treasurer said in a televised interview. Josh Frydenberg stated on Australian Broadcasting Corp’s “Insiders” program on Sunday that Facebook’s Chief Executive Officer “could not convince” him to back down in what he described as a ‘very constructive’ dialogue.

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Google 'experiment' In Australia Filters Out Major News Websites

Meanwhile, Alphabet Inc’s Google ‘experimented’ in Australia by removing major news sites from search results and it hid significant news stories from hundreds of thousands of Australians. As per The Guardian report, in some of the cases, by filtering out the mainstream news publication from the search results, the lower-quality publications are being promoted including one news website known for spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories. 

The changes in the search feed came after the tech giant had previously announced that it is running “a few experiments that will each reach about 1% of Google Search users in Australia to measure the impacts of news businesses and Google Search on each other”. However, Google has reportedly refused to answer more detailed questions about the experiment but recently disclosed its plans of launching its own news website in Australia within weeks.

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