Nine Entertainment, Australia’s second-biggest media company, called Thursday for Google and other tech giants to pay Australian news outlets some $400 million a year under a mandatory code of conduct.
Australia last month announced plans to force internet firms to share advertising revenues earned from news content featured by their search engines. The government is due to unveil in July details of the mandatory payments. Google and Facebook protested the move.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) had determined that 10% of the tech firms’ revenues derived from advertising on news content.
Peter Costello, the chairman of Nine Entertainment, said that the payment should amount to 10% of the tech companies’ advertising revenue in Australia, which amounts to some $3.9 billion per year.
“So, if you apply those figures, Google and Facebook are taking about Aus$600 million of advertising revenue out, which otherwise could have, or should have, been going to media”, Costello said, and added: “They are essentially using the product which is created by news organisations without paying for it”.
An estimated 17 million Australians spend an average of 30 minutes on Facebook a day, while 98% of Australian mobile searches use Google.