Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison fired back at Google after threats to remove its search engine from the country if the government passed legislation requiring the company to compensate news organizations it share content from.
Speaking on Friday after the National Cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister said that Google wouldn’t blackmail the Australian government into adopting any specific policy:
Let me be clear. Australia makes our rules for things you can do in Australia. That’s done in our parliament. It’s done by our government, and that’s how things work here in Australia. And people who want to work with that, in Australia, you’re very welcome. But we don’t respond to threats.
The remarks follow Google threatening to remove its search engine in Australia if a recent law introduced in the Australian Parliament were to pass. The bill would “force Facebook and Google to negotiate fees with news companies whose stories appear on their platforms.”
