Google announced back in June that they will release a news-content licensing program that will pay publishers for high-quality content for a brand new ‘news experience’ released later this year. According to Google, this initiative is going to have “an enhanced storytelling experience that lets people go deeper into more complex stories.” Germany, Brazil and Australia were the first places that this new feature was tested. This product won’t be replacing Google News, but will live side-by-side by it.
But, for the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) seems to have taken a bit of an issue with this. The ACCC released a “News Media Bargaining Code,” that would put new rules in place that would heavily affect both Google and Facebook regarding company dealings and news publishers.
As an example, these rules would allow publishers and Google to collectively bargain with each other. In response, Google issued an appeal saying that if these new rules became a real thing, it would cause Google Search and YouTube to worsen, and consumer data to be handed over to news companies. Also, the company believes that this would cause a huge disadvantage for smaller publishers and content creators as well.
Source – Search Engine Land