Search giant unhappy with final offer arbitration process to be used between tech giants and Australian newspapers.
Google has continued its fight against Australia’s news media bargaining code, this time attacking the final offer arbitration process, known as baseball arbitration, that will be used. In such a process, rather than parties agreeing to a deal, an arbitrator is presented with a final offer from each side and must select one of the offers presented. Google is arguing that Australia’s old media are asking for sums far in excess of what Google generates from searches related to news, which it says is around AU$10 million in revenue. «Clearly, both sides have very different ideas of what the prices should be — and asking the arbitrator to pick a ‘final offer’ is an extreme way of resolving that,» Google ANZ chief Mel Silva said in a blog post. «The reality is that baseball arbitration often fails and doesn’t produce quick outcomes. Independent economists have raised questions about its effectiveness.» Silva also said the arbitrator would not need to consider the approximately AU$200 million the search giant claims news organisation derive in value from Google properties. «We are happy to negotiate fairly and, if needed, see a standard dispute resolution scheme in place,» Silva wrote. «But given the inherent problems with baseball arbitration, and the unfair rules that underpin it here, the model being proposed isn’t workable for Google.
