If Google does pull its search engine out of Australia, there are alternatives

Shutterstock/Wachiwit

Gianluca Demartini, The University of Queensland

The Australian government’s push to make Google pay news organisations for linking to their content has seen the search giant threaten to pull out of Australia.

Google Australia’s managing director Mel Silva said if the government’s proposal goes ahead, “we would have no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia”.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison pushed back saying he won’t respond to “threats”. Even the Council of Small Business Organisations Australia says Google needs “strong and stringent” regulation because of its monopoly on searching the web.

What if Google pulls out?

Google’s proposal to make Google Search unavailable in Australia means we would need to search the web using other systems and tools. If this really happens, we could no longer go to google.com and google.com.au to search the web.

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Read more:
It’s not ‘fair’ and it won’t work: an argument against the ACCC forcing Google and Facebook to pay for news

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It is important to note that Google is not just web search. Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc also runs key web portals such as YouTube, and productivity tools such as Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Maps (which actually started in Australia). Those services are not going to be removed from the Australian market, even if web search does get pulled out.

Online advertising is another sector in which Google is the market leader and where it makes money. Pulling Google web search out from Australia does not mean businesses would no longer be able to advertise using Google’s services.

But with no Google Search here, those adverts would no longer appear ahead of any other search results and be visited by Australian users.

Google Search places paid advertising ahead of any search results.
Google.com/screenshot

Businesses would still be able to put their adverts on other Australian websites that use the Google Ads service.

The issue with this scenario is that Google’s key competitive advantage is the ability to access data from people using its search services. Pulling web search out from the Australian market would mean Google missing out on that data from people in Australia.

The alternatives to Google

Google is the dominant search engine in Australia — it has 94% of the web search market in Australia — but there are other search services.

The second most popular search engine in Australia is Bing, developed by Microsoft and often integrated into other Microsoft products such as its Windows operating system and Office tools.

Another less popular search option is Yahoo, which also offers its own news and email service.

Other alternatives include niche search engines that offer unique tools with special features.

For example, DuckDuckGo is a search engine that has recently risen in popularity thanks to a commitment to protecting its users’ privacy.

DuckDuckGo is gaining support.
DuckDuckGo/Screen shot

Contrary to the web search products from Google and Microsoft, DuckDuckGo does not store its users’ search queries or track their interactions with the system.

The quality of DuckDuckGo’s search results has improved over time, and is now comparable to that of the most popular search engines.

It says it now processes a daily average of more than 90 million search queries, up from just over 51 million the same time last year.

Despite not drawing on users’ data to refine its search algorithms, the technology behind DuckDuckGo and other smaller players is based on the same machine-learning methods that others are using.

Search the web, save the planet

Another interesting and recent proposal of an alternative web search engine is Ecosia. This system is unique as it focuses on sustainability and positive climate impact.

Its mission is to reinvest the income generated by search advertisements (the same business model Google Search is using) to plant trees in key areas around the world.

So far, it says it has 15 million users and has contributed to planting more than 100 million trees, about 1.3 every second.

Will Google really abandon Australia?

Tim Berners-Lee, widely regarded as the inventor of the web, has pointed out that the idea of asking web platforms to pay to post links runs counter to his fundamental concept.

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That said, it is also unfair for a search engine to make money using content that others have created.

It is also true that most of Google’s revenue already comes from asking others to pay for links on the web. This is how Google’s online advertising works: Google Ads makes advertisers pay for every impression users get or click users make to navigate to the advertised web page.

If users end up buying the advertised product, Google gets an even higher payment.

More likely than Google pulling out of the Australian market, the government and the search giant should diplomatically find a compromise in which Google still provides its web search product in Australia and there will be a return to news organisations for Google making use of their content.

Gianluca Demartini, Associate professor, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Evidence mounts for a search further north for missing flight MH370

Charitha Pattiaratchi, University of Western Australia and Sarath Wijeratne, University of Western Australia

It is now more than three years since Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared, and there is growing evidence that the search authorities have been looking for the aircraft in the wrong place.

The disappearance, on March 8, 2014, is considered as one of the biggest mysteries in aviation and the search of the seabed for the wreckage, costing A$200 million to date, is also the most expensive.

An underwater search of a 120,000 square kilometre area of the Indian Ocean, off Western Australia, has so far failed to find any evidence of the crash site.

The search was suspended in January this year until any “credible new information” should emerge that could be used to identify the specific location of the aircraft.

Initial search data

Initial evidence on the aircraft flight path was through satellite data (SatCom) from Inmarsat. This indicated that the plane most likely ended up in the southeast Indian Ocean along an arc – the 7th arc – that was the basis for defining the search areas by the Australian Air Transport Safety Board (ATSB).

Location of the 7th Arc and the completed search area.
ATSB

Considering several end-of-flight scenarios, the ATSB defined the original search area of 120,000 square kilometres as being 40km either side of the SatCom 7th arc along a distance of 700km between latitudes 39.3°S and 36°S.

This search area was defined before any debris had been found in the eastern Indian Ocean, and was based only on the SatCom data. No oceanographic evidence was available at the time the search area was defined.

The ATSB initially announced that the first possible landfall of debris would be on the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, in the first weeks of July 2015. Subsequent to the finding of debris in the eastern Indian Ocean it was found that the oceanographic advice provided to the ATSB (not by the CSIRO) was incorrect.

Debris emerges

On July 29, 2015, more than 16 months after the flight disappeared, a wing section called a flaperon washed up on Reunion Island in the western Indian Ocean. This has been confirmed as originating from the MH370 aircraft.

More aircraft debris has been found in the western Indian Ocean: in Mauritius, Tanzania, Rodrigues, Mauritius again, Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa.

The ATSB undertook a first principles review in November 2016 and based on additional information, particularly from oceanographic drift modelling, concluded that the 120,000 square kilometre search area was unlikely to contain the missing aircraft.

The ATSB also reported that oceanographic debris modelling undertaken by the CSIRO provided strong evidence that the aircraft was most likely to be located to the north of the search area between latitudes 32.5°S and 36°S along the 7th arc within an area of 25,000 square kilometres close to 35°S.

CSIRO released an updated report on April 21 this year with more refined modelling of the flaperon, based on field tests using an actual Boeing 777 flaperon.

This confirmed the conclusion of the first principles review that the crash site is most likely at the southern end of the 25,000 square kilometre region near 35°S. CSIRO defines the error to be within 100km, which is 1° of latitude.

More evidence

Many independent oceanographic studies using different oceanographic (for current fields) and debris transport models have reached similar conclusions with respect to the location of the crash site.

They have all concluded that the crash site is not in the initial 120,000 square kilometre search area, but further north. A European study placed the crash site between 28°S and 35°S, and our study puts it between 28°S and 33°S.

Since the flaperon was discovered on Reunion Island, more pieces of debris have been found – many confirmed to be from MH370 and others to be from a Boeing 777, the aircraft design used for the flight.

The locations of these debris finds are consistent with oceanographic drift modelling. These predictions guided the discovery of many pieces of debris by US lawyer and amateur investigator Blaine Gibson and next-of-kin in Mozambique and Madagascar.

Of the 22 pieces of debris found the location of 18 were predicted by our UWA model. Those not predicted were in Mauritius and Rodrigues Islands which may not be well represented in the oceanographic model. The debris origin for this was at 96.5°E and 32.5°S along the 7th arc.

Thus based on the results of several independent oceanographic drift modelling studies that have used different oceanographic models to predict the current fields and including different debris transport modules, all have come to a similar conclusion to that of the ATSB’s first-principles review: the crash site is along the 7th arc 32.5°S and 36°S within an area of 25,000 square kilometres.

This area is immediately to the north of the 120,000 square kilometre region that has already been searched.

From an oceanographic viewpoint this is the best “credible new information” the search authorities have asked for that could be provided on the location of the MH370 crash site.

As oceanographers we have been using drift modelling for variety of applications for more than two decades and have high confidence in the results.

Charitha Pattiaratchi, Professor of Coastal Oceanography, University of Western Australia and Sarath Wijeratne, Research Assistant Professor, UWA Oceans Institute, University of Western Australia

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Muslim Mob Targets Christian, Family in Murder Case

Villagers beat young man and his relatives, as well as burn their crops and press charges.

SHEIKHUPURA, Pakistan, October 11 (CDN) — A young Christian has been jailed for nearly eight months and his family was attacked after a Muslim friend framed him for murder, he said.

Yassir Masih, 18, has been locked up at Sheikhupura District Jail since his arrest in late February. In an interview at Narang Mandi police station at that time, Masih said that on Feb. 17 his Muslim friend Muhammad Mubashir came to his house late at night and asked him to accompany him on “an urgent piece of work.”

Residents of Pandori village in Sheikhupura district, Mubashir and Masih went to the home of Muhammad Imran, who was in love with the same girl as Mubashir; Masih said the two one-time friends often quarreled over her, with bitter enmity eventually developing between them.

“Being a friend, I went with him, reluctantly, and we soon arrived at the door of Muhammad Imran,” Masih said. “Muhammad Mubashir knocked on the door, and as soon as Muhammad Imran opened the door, Muhammad Mubashir opened fire with his pistol, killing Muhammad Imran on the spot.”

The gunfire awakened villagers, who gathered and began to search for the killer, Masih said. Frightened of the mob and not wanting to put his family in danger, Masih did not return home but fled with Mubashir. The two young men hid in a field of crops, where they decided to leave the village until passions cooled, he said. As Masih left the village, however, he was unaware that Mubashir had melted into the mob that was looking for the killer, he said.

“Later Muhammad Mubashir went to his house and slept in his warm bed that shivering cold winter night,” Masih said.

The next day villagers discovered Masih was missing and therefore accused him of killing Imran, he said.

They didn’t stop at that, said Khalid Gill, chief organizer for Punjab Province of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance. Gill said that in order to deprive the wealthy Christian family of their profitable strawberry, wheat, corn and other crops, Mubashir’s father, Muhammad Gulfam, filed murder, arms possession and terrorism charges not only against Masih but also against his 50-year-old father Abid Masih, as well as brothers Khalid Masih, 30; Asif Masih, 23; Ashir Masih, 15; Faisal Masih, 13; and two others unnamed.

“Most of the Muslims in the area harbored jealousy against the prosperous Christian family,” Gill pointed out, explaining why Gulfam also pressed charges against members of Yassir Masih’s family.

Additionally, the angry villagers on Feb. 18 overran the property of Masih’s grandfather, Rehmat Masih, where four of the late patriarch’s sons lived; the mob beat women and children with clubs and looted appliances, clothes and other household items, Gill said.

“Nothing was left of use for the Christian family,” Gill said.

He added that the villagers ransacked Yassir Masih’s home and burned 20 acres of his fields on Feb. 18. The village comprises about 2,000 Muslim families and only 15 Christian homes, he said.

Officers from Narang Mandi police station arrested Yassir Masih later than month. He and his family members told officers that Mubashir shot Imran, but police listened only to the lies of the plaintiff, Masih said.

On Feb. 19 Yassir Masih’s mother, Shamshad Bibi, went to the Narang Mandi police station to file a complaint against the Muslim villagers for attacking and looting their house and burning their crops, Gill said. Police filed a case against the attackers but so far no one has been arrested, and “all the Muslim leaders who instigated the Muslim mob to attack are still at large,” Gill said.

At the same time, Narang Mandi police have arrested not only Yassir Masih but his brothers Ashir Masih and Asif Masih, 15 and 23 years old respectively, Gill said. While Yassir Masih has been incarcerated at Sheikhupura District Jail, Ashir Masih and Asif Masih were interrogated by Criminal Investigation Agency officers and have been kept at an undisclosed location since Feb. 18.

The accused Christian’s father, Abid Masih, as well as Khalid Masih, were still in hiding at press time. Police exonerated young Faisal Masih of all charges on Sept.1. Gill said that the 13-year-old boy had moved to an undisclosed location.

Report from Compass Direct News

Muslims in Pakistan Kidnap, Rape Christian Girl

Five men threatened to kill her unless her father allowed one to marry her.

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, June 16 (CDN) — Five Muslims here kidnapped and raped a Christian girl after threatening to kill her unless her father allowed one of them to marry her.

Lazarus Masih said one of his three daughters, 14, was kidnapped on May 29 by five men identified only as Guddu, Kamran, Waqas, Adil and Ali.

Police recovered her on June 6 in a raid on the home where she was being held, though the suspects escaped.

“They threatened that if I don’t get her married to Guddu, they would kill her,” Masih said. “One of them said, ‘We attended an Islamic religious convention, and the speaker said if you marry a non-Muslim or rape a non-Muslim girl, you will get 70 virgins in heaven.”

He said that when he and his wife returned from work at around 11 a.m. on May 29, their 14-year-old daughter was not at home; his other daughters had been at school and said they did not know where she had gone.

During the family’s search for her, they heard from Masih’s brother-in-law, Yousaf Masih, that he had seen five Muslim men follow her earlier that morning.

“In the morning around 7:30 a.m., I saw that [name withheld] and another girl were sitting in a rickshaw and five Muslim guys – Guddu, Kamran, Waqas, Adil and Ali – followed the rickshaw,” Yousaf Masih told the girl’s father.

Family members said the suspects took her to a house near Islamabad, where they gave her a drug that rendered her unconscious, and raped her. A medical report confirmed that she was given drugs and raped.

Lazarus Masih, who lives with his daughters and wife in Mohalla Raja Sultan, Rawalpindi, filed a First Information Report at the Waris Khan police station on June 1 against all five men. He said Guddu, Kamran and Waqas sell and use drugs.

He also contacted advocacy organization Ephlal Ministry, which along with representatives of Life for All and Peace Pakistan met with police chief Mazhar Hussain Minhas and demanded immediate action for the recovery of the girl.

“This is a very sad incident, and we will do whatever we can to recover the girl,” Hussain Minhas told them.

Devastated family members said the girl remained frightened and was not speaking to anyone.

“It is such a shame that the religious leaders teach inhuman acts,” said the Rev. John Gill of Shamsabad Catholic Church. “This incident has ruined the life of an innocent child.”

The family formerly belonged to the Catholic parish but now affiliates with a Protestant church, New Life Ministry in Rawalpindi.

Report from Compass Direct News

Muslim Boys in Pakistan Accused of Raping Christian Girl

DNA results match their semen samples in case filed by family of fatherless 14-year-old.

LAHORE, Pakistan, June 3 (CDN) — Forensic DNA results of semen samples in a sexual assault case show they match those of the Muslim boys a 14-year-old Christian girl accuses of raping her, according to advocacy organizations.

The girl accuses Muhammad Noman and Muhammad Imran, both 17, of abducting her from her school in Kamboh colony, Lahore, in Punjab Province, on May 6 and drugging her prior to sexually assaulting her, according to Khalid Gill, president of the Christian Lawyers Foundation (CLF), and officials of the National Commission of Justice and Peace (NCJP).

The minor, whose name was withheld, told the organizations that she was waiting for her younger sister at the main gate of S.M. Foundation School after class hours when Noman and Imran told her that a girl named Hira wanted to see her.

The girl said that she told them she was not familiar with anyone named Hira, but that she was not afraid because there was no problem meeting a girl. She told the NCJP that as she stepped off the school grounds, Noman and Imran overpowered her, tightly covering her mouth to stifle her cries for help. Later they gagged her with a band of cloth.

NCJP General Secretary Peter Jacob reported that they took her by motorbike to a place unknown to her and compelled her to consume a soft drink containing tranquilizers. Able to see but unable to move as she began to lose consciousness, she was unable to stop them as each boy raped her, she told the NCJP. She said she later became totally unconscious.

The CLF’s Gill said the boys later left her on a road near the school’s main entrance.

The girl’s father, Rehmat Masih, is deceased. Her mother, Aysha Bibi, said that she had fearfully begun searching for her and had contacted a school administration official, who said that her daughter had left the school on foot. Several Christian neighbors also participated in the search.

Christian neighbor Shehzad Masih found her unconscious on the road near the school gate and brought her home, according to the NCJP’s Jacob. As the 14-year-old regained consciousness, her mother and others brought her to the Millat Park Police Station and filed an application to register a case against Noman and Imran.

After investigating, on May 9 Millat Park Police registered a case against Noman and Imran for abducting “with intent to commit adultery.”

Although Muslims commonly commit crimes against Christians in Pakistan assuming law enforcement officials will not prosecute, the two boys were arrested on May 26. Police sent DNA samples of the semen of both Muslim youths to a forensic laboratory, and the results linking them to the crime returned this week, CLF and NCJP’s Jacob said.  

A urine test indicated the girl was not pregnant, CLF and NCJP officials said.

Report from Compass Direct News