Australia says ‘inevitable’ Google, others have to pay for news

Frydenberg also accused the tech giants of shifting the goalposts when it came to expressing their resistance to the code, after they first rejected a final arbitration model, to now opposing the idea of paying for any clicks displayed under the search results. — AFP

Australia’s Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said it’s “inevitable” that Google and other tech behemoths will have to eventually pay for using media content, responding to the Internet giant’s threat to disable its search engine in the country if it’s forced to pay local publishers for news.

Google said Friday that a proposed law, intended to compensate publishers for the value their stories generate for the company, is “unworkable”, opposing the requirement it pay media companies for displaying snippets of articles in search results.