Victory? We’ve been outmanoeuvred by Facebook and Google

The federal parliament has passed the so-called ‘News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code’. Despite the name, and the cheering from politicians and media sycophants, there actually won’t be too much actual mandatory bargaining.

Some weeks ago Google ran an ‘experiment’ that removed Australian news sources from its search. Ironically this experiment was discovered when a News Corp journalist was attempting to Google articles published in his own paper – rather than the internal, and inferior, search engine provided by his paper for use by subscribers. Yes, dear reader, the free search engine provided by Google is better than one provided to paying customers of News Corp. Despite some governmental…