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Microsoft Corp. announced today that it’s joining a coalition of European media publishers in an effort to ensure they get paid for content shared online.

The move comes after Microsoft gave its support for what’s now being called the Australia model, legislation in the country that will force companies such as Google LLC and Facebook Inc. to pay for what they share. Google has already made a deal with Australia, while Facebook controversially decided to “unfriend” the country.

Update: Late Monday night, Facebook said it has reached a deal with the Australian government to restore news to the social network’s News Feed.

“Going forward, the government has clarified we will retain the ability to decide if news appears on Facebook so that we won’t automatically be subject to a forced negotiation,” Campbell Brown, Facebook’s vice president for global news partnerships, said in prepared remarks. “It’s always been our intention to support journalism in Australia and around the world.” The Australian government said Tuesday in Australia that it would amend legislation to make it clearer how it would regulate tech companies.

“Europe’s press publishers and Microsoft today agreed to work together on a solution to ensure that Europe’s press publishers get paid for the use of their content by gatekeepers that have dominant market power in line with the objectives of the new neighboring right in the EU Digital Single Market Copyright Directive, which comes into force this June and to take inspiration from the new Australian legislation that requires the tech gatekeepers covered by that law to share revenue with news organizations,” the European Publishers Council wrote in a post today.

The organization stated that payments to media companies would be mandated, based on the new Australian legislation. A panel will establish what is a fair price based on what each party derives in benefits from the content. The coalition itself will consist of myriad media outlets across Europe, as well as the European Publishers Council, News Media Europe and the European Magazine Media Association.

“Access to fresh, broad and deep press coverage is critical to the success of our democracies,” said Microsoft Vice President Casper Klynge. “Our commitment to preserving and promoting journalism isn’t new. In October 2020, we launched a new initiative to invest in and support local media and, through Microsoft News, we have been sharing a large portion of revenue with press publishers. This initiative is a logical next step.”

Microsoft may have talked a lot about “gatekeepers” and saving journalism, but critics have been quick to point out that the company’s Bing search engine has a tiny market share compared with the behemoth of the Google search engine. If Google were to pull out of any country, Microsoft could be the company that benefits.

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