Google has admitted to “running a few experiments” interfering with search engines so that for some Australians current news has been disappearing being replaced with old news, and links and some news outlets have disappeared altogether.
This follows the Australian government’s attempt to introduce a news media bargaining code that would force Google and Facebook to negotiate a fair price for local news content with eligible Australian outlets.
Google says that the bargaining code “will break the way Google search works undermining the benefits of the internet for millions of Australians”. Belinda Barnet, senior lecturer in media and communications at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, says it is Google themselves who have done exactly that.
In a piece written for the Guardian Barnet said: “As the gateway to information for the overwhelming majority of web users here – the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission puts Google’s share of search traffic at 95% – it can readily control the information Australians have access to. By just tinkering with that power, by conducting little ‘experiments’, it can make or break news businesses. It can make or break people’s ability to sort fact from fiction in the middle of a pandemic.”
According to Google, the experiment is being used “to measure the impact of news businesses and Google Search on each other”. One percent of Google Search users in Australia will be affected by the experiment which according to Google will end by early February.