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View all search resultsWill Google stay committed to Indonesia's publisher rights?
Only days after Google News Showcase was launched in Indonesia, Google abruptly terminated multi-year licensing agreements with 24 small and ethnic media outlets in Australia, two years before they were due to expire.
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Tech behemoth: The logo of Google is shown on a building on Oct. 9, 2024, in San Diego, California, the United States. (Reuters/Mike Blake)
I
n February 2024, Indonesia took a long-overdue step to address the growing imbalances between global tech platforms and domestic publishers by enacting Presidential Regulation No. 32/2024 on the Responsibility of the Digital Platforms to Support Quality Journalism, which is widely known as Publisher Rights Regulation.
A year later, the launch of Google News Showcase (GNS) on May 28 was hailed as a milestone. It marked the first concrete implementation of the Presidential Regulation, with 34 national and local publishers on board. Under the agreement, Google committed to paying licensing fees for curated news panels. For a moment, it seemed that Indonesia had turned a page in building a fairer digital news ecosystem.
But just as Indonesia was celebrating, an unsettling development unfolded from Australia, a country widely regarded as a pioneer in platform regulation.
Only days after GNS launched in Indonesia, Google abruptly terminated multi-year licensing agreements with 24 small and ethnic media outlets in Australia, two years before they were due to expire. The agreements, reached in 2022 through the Public Interest Publishers Alliance and facilitated by the Minderoo Foundation, were part of the broader industry compliance with the 2021 News Media Bargaining Code (NMBC). Google cited an “internal review” and a new preference for channeling funds through a centralized, third-party model.
The move sparked outrage. Affected publishers warned that sudden termination threatened their financial stability and eroded trust in voluntary arrangements.
It followed Meta’s 2024 decision to walk away from similar deals in Australia, citing shifting priorities and cost-cutting. Together, these actions suggest a troubling trend: While platforms benefit from journalistic content, they are pulling back from regulatory commitments.
Instead of building stable, long-term partnerships, they appear to be reverting to a unilateral model, monetizing without compensation and leaving public interest journalism out in the cold.
