Australia to impose tighter restriction on Google, Facebook over data protection issues

The Australian government released a report Friday recommending tighter oversight over multinational digital platforms including Google and Facebook, to ensure fairness for other media businesses and give people more control over how their data is used.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the nation’s fair trade watchdog, spent 18 months investigating the impact of digital search engines, social media platforms, and digital content aggregators on competition in the media and advertising services markets.

For every $100 spent by advertisers online in Australia — excluding classified ads — $47 goes to Google, $24 to Facebook and $29 to other players, it said.

READ ALSO: Hackers can steal all your data on Apple, Google, Facebook, others, report says

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg agreed that regulations need to be strengthened. The government will respond by the year’s end after three months of consultations on the 600-page report’s 23 recommendations.

“Make no mistake, these companies are among the most powerful and valuable in the world and they need to be held to account and their activities need to be more transparent,” Frydenberg told reporters.

Google and Facebook said they would discuss the recommendations with the Australian government in due course.

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