ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large |Contact
The Federal Government has extended an invitation to the people of Australia to start using the Government’s own search engine when US tech-giant Google inevitable packs up and leaves Australia forever.
Google and the Morrison Government have been locked in negotiations over the Media Bargaining Code which should see online and independent news in this country killed off in an effort to force Australians to either start consuming more traditional news again like newspapers or just stop consuming news at all.
But one of the biggest fears that has emerged from the people over this issue is that Google is now threatening to remove its popular search engine from Australia entirely.
That will force millions of people around the country to use weird search engines like Bing and DuckDuckGo, the latter being one they should already use if they don’t have rocks inside their head.
This morning, the government has moved to sully some of those fears by planning to let Australians use the same search engine that the nation’s policymakers and politicians use every day.
“It’s called Ask Rupert,” said Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.
“I use it every day. Last year, I typed in ‘how to get re-elected’ into Ask Rupert and it came back with ‘create legislation that destroys all media in this country that’s not mine or Channel Nines’ and as you can see, I’m doing what the search engine told me to do and it’s working,”
“When Google leaves, we’re going to let every Australian use it. It’s so easy, you don’t even have to think. You just turn your brain off, pay tax and die without going to hospital in some sort of terrible accident just before you’re eligible for the Old Age Pension. A perfect Australian in my mind.”
The Ask Rupert search engine should be available for use by the public from June 30 this year.
More to come.
