Search Engine Giant Google has launched a $1 billion initiative to pay news publishers who create content on its new product, the Google News Showcase. The product will first appear on Google News for Android, offering rolling panels for partner publishers to curate stories that will appear on Google News.
“These panels give participating publishers the ability to package the stories that appear within Google’s news products, providing deeper storytelling and more context through features like timelines, bullets and related articles. Other components like video, audio and daily briefings will come next.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
The financial commitment and the Google News Showcase platform builds upon an earlier Licensing Program, which pledged to support publishers to report important news despite financial challenges. In June 2020, Products Management VP Brand Bender announced that the news licensing program would allow users to access select premium articles locked behind paywalls, pushing the audience for publishers by allowing access to readers who could not pay for premium subscription fees.
CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog that Google News Showcase launched on October 1 in Brazil and Germany, looking to roll out in other countries in the coming months. Currently, Google has signed partnership deals with close to 200 publishers in U.K, Canada, Germany, Australia and Brazil, planning to reach others in India, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The expansion plans, however, are subject to regulatory approval from individual countries.
