Google threatened to withdraw from the Australian market if a new law governing its dealings with news publishers were passed.
So what is it about?
Why should Google withdraw from Australia?
The government is introducing a law to address a lengthy controversy over whether tech giants should pay for news that appears in search or is shared on their platforms.
The proposed law would require Google to enter into commercial agreements with all news outlets or initiate forced arbitration, something Google says is "impractical".
"If this version of the code becomes law, it will give us no choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia," said regional director Mel Silva.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Google: "We don't respond to threats."
What alternatives are there?
Google holds around 90-95% of the search engine market share in Australia, similar to the rest of the world.
But there are other search options, mainly Microsoft's Bing and Yahoo, but also privacy-focused ones like DuckDuckGo.
But while website analytics firm Alexa ranks Google as the most visited site on the internet, Yahoo ranks 11th and Bing is 33rd.
Would the demise of Google really affect people?
In 2018, a writer for Wired magazine spent three months using Bing exclusively and concluded that it worked well almost always.
But in very specific cases, such as finding old articles, he had a hard time, because the techniques he learned to search using Google did not produce the expected results.
And Google isn't just a search engine - its search technology also powers services like Gmail, Google Maps, and YouTube, among others.
It is unclear at this stage whether Google's threat, if executed, will affect those other apps.
There are alternatives to these, but they are underused and Google's apps are seen as essential by many consumers.
When Huawei phones lost access to Google services amid a quarrel with U.S. regulators, they found it much more difficult to sell phones in the West.
Could this set a global precedent?
Australian Senator Rex Patrick told Google: "It will go all over the world. You will withdraw from every market, right?"
But Google and other interested companies, such as Facebook, are based in the United States.
And the US government - at least the previous administration - has urged Australia not to "rush" the new law, warning that it is "extraordinary" and could have "long-lasting negative consequences."
While there is no exact match for this scenario, Google left a country earlier due to local laws.
Google has been largely unavailable in mainland China since a dispute in 2010 over alleged Chinese hacking, during which it stopped censoring search results for Chinese users.
There is also a different, but similar, quarrel in Europe.
A controversial new EU copyright rule states that search engines and news aggregators should pay news sites for links.
In France, publishers have agreed with Google this week on how it should work.
But only a handful of such deals have been signed, with major French newspapers, making it a very different thing to Australia's far-reaching and much stricter plans.
How much is Australia worth to Google?
Compared to China, Australia is a much smaller potential market.
Google Australia earned AUS $ 4.8 billion (£ 3.7 billion; £ 2.7 billion) in 2019. Advertising revenue accounted for the majority of that, at AU $ 4.3 billion. But it takes into account all expenses and Google Australia made a profit of $ 134 million a year.
To put that into context, the Google Alphabet parent has an estimated $ 100 billion or more in cash on hand to cover any revenue gaps.
But it's about more than money.
The wider concern is whether Google wants a modern Western democracy to show how using its competitors can be perfectly feasible.
Can't Australians just use Google in the US?
It is possible that Google may redirect Australian Google users to the US (or other country) version of Google. This would likely eliminate the localized search results, but keep the service accessible.
But it could also happen that Google blocks Australian users based on their geographic location determined by an IP (Internet) address.
An easy way to get around this is to use a virtual private network, or VPN, that makes your computer look like somewhere else, a trick often used by tech-savvy people to access streaming services in other countries.
But it's slower, and reputable providers require a subscription, a hassle many people would rather avoid for simple search results.
What does Google want to pay for Australia?
How much money is involved exactly is undecided.
The bill provides for bargaining and arbitration, leaving the question open: If Google fails to reach an agreement with a news agency, a judge will decide what's "right."
But the government has said it wants "fair" payments to news outlets, which in the past 15 years have seen revenue from print advertising drop by three quarters.
Conversely, digital advertising on major platforms such as Google and Facebook has increased significantly over the same period.
Would it really help publishers?
Australia has a vibrant information industry: media titan Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp. was born there.
Its outlets would benefit, as would public broadcasters like ABC News in Australia.
ABC's funding has been cut by hundreds of millions of dollars since 2014, resulting in cuts in services.
Local newspapers have also been hurt by the demise of advertising - with more than 125 News Corp-owned regional newspapers going online just earlier this year, causing hundreds of job losses.
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