One story that has been going around recently is how companies such as Google and Facebook may be required by law in Australia to pay media companies a fee in order to display news snippets on its sites. One example is how on Google there are actually dedicated news sections that show you small parts of an article which users should then click to visit the actual site.
Apparently at first Google thought of simply blocking any news sites that requests for any form compensation. But I the country actually applied this as a law overall then the company can’t do that to get around it. So their recent response it seems is that they essentially threatened to pull out of the Australian market completely because of it. But the government didn’t seem to back down regardless of the warning that it would hurt businesses that rely on Google services.
It makes me wonder where when you see a large company propose to simply leave a market would you actually consider that as a threat as if they believe they are so powerful that you will cater to its demand? Or would you view it as simply a company making a financial business decision that they feel makes the most sense? Because by the sounds of it most people view it as a threat which doesn’t put them in a positive light.
One thing is usually consistent where when a company is that big people don’t generally care too much if they have to pay extra fees.