When iTWire sent the query to Google — at 9.47am AEST on Monday, emailing both its local press people and the international team — the policy read this way:
"For example, we may collect information that’s publicly available online or from other public sources to help train Google’s languageAI models and build products and features like Google Translate, Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities. Or, if your business’s information appears on a website, we may index and display it on Google services."
Given that, iTWire made the following queries:
"What about the copyright that applies to public information? Does this mean that Google plans to infringe on individual copyright with no respect for copyright laws?
"Or does Google plan to pay for people's copyright before blithely using their IP?"
Google is very quick to acknowledge media queries, doing so almost instantaneously and saying it will send a response provided the query comes from a genuine media outlet.
But on this occasion, the good PR folk at Google have kept mum. The company has quietly buried this text and instead linked to it from the privacy policy page. iTWire had requested a response by the close of business on Monday. As any reader can see, the text on the page has changed quite a bit.
It can now be seen at this URL.
Google appears to have scrubbed the original page from the Internet Archive as well. Normally, an earlier version would be present as the archive crawls the Web and stores pages for people to use.
There is no way the company can deny this scrubbing as many other sites have reported the bid to use copyrighted information from world+dog without bothering about copyright: 1, 2, 3.
In case the company is unaware, one of Australia's former prime ministers, Scott Morrison, who is an expert at this kind of subterfuge, is looking for a job. In case he is hired, I'd be grateful for a commission for making the recommendation.