It is no secret that there are a handful of websites and services that dominate the web, like Google for search, and Facebook for social media. In turn this has resulted in many companies sort of forced to play by their rules, because getting deranked from Google could mean losing a significant chunk of your visitors.This is why it doesn’t come as a surprise to learn that over in Australia, the country’s competition regulator has announced that they would investigate both Google and Facebook over whether or not they have disrupted the news media outlet, and not necessarily in a positive way.
The regulator will be looking into whether or not the practices by Google and Facebook has disrupted the media market to the detriment of both publishers and consumers. In a statement provided by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chairman Rod Sims, “We will examine whether platforms are exercising market power in commercial dealings to the detriment of consumers, media content creators and advertisers.”
Whether or not they will find anything remains to be seen, but like we said earlier, these companies do wield some pretty heavy influence on others. For example a couple of months ago, Google announced that they will be dropping their controversial “first click free” policy, where Google had mandated that publishers with paywalls to allow readers to access three free articles a day before being met with a paywall.
The policy was controversial as it basically was Google telling publishers how to go about their business, that is if you want to remain ranked highly on Google’s search.