Google has announced that the company will be paying around $1 billion over three years to news publishers for content and to support the launch of a new product, which is dubbed as Google News Showcase.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, claimed that this investment of $1 billion in news publishers is the company’s biggest financial commitment to journalism so far. He added that with the new Google News Showcase, the company is aiming to create a “different kind of online news experience.”
For the new platform, Google has already signed licensing deals with more than 200 publications in select countries. However, the company is planning to add more publishers and will also expand geographically.
The participating publishers will be able to curate and decide how to present their content on the platform. The content is displayed as a “story panel” and publishers can use timelines, bullets, or related articles to tease the story and encourage viewers to click and visit their website to read more. As a part of the program, Google will pay some publishers to make the paywalled articles free to access to non-subscribers.
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In the future, Google will also allow publishers to include video and audio and not limit them to just text and images. Brad Bender, Google’s vice president of product management for news has said that the company plans to go beyond the three-year commitment and therefore invest more than the planned $1 billion.
Google News Showcase is currently available only in the Google News app on Android but the company adds that it will soon come to the iOS app. Later on, it will be expanded to the Google Discover app and Google Search. Currently, this new platform is available to users in Brazil and Germany.
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