Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks to the media ahead of the opening of the Berlin representation of Google Germany in Berlin on January 22, 2019.
Carsten Koall | Getty Images News | Getty Images
LONDON – Google announced on Wednesday that it has launched its News Showcase product in the UK, which means the tech giant will now pay for news content in the country for the first time.
The Silicon Valley firm has signed an agreement with 120 British publications, including The Financial Times and Reuters, which will be paid a license fee to produce news excerpts that appear on the Google News Showcase. Reports suggest that publishers will receive a few million dollars a year from Google.
The feature will be included in the Google News mobile app and Google Discover, which is a feed channel selected by Google on mobile devices containing articles and videos.
When users click on excerpts from the Google News app or Google Discover, they will be directed to the full article on the publisher’s site.
“Google News Showcase, our new product and licensing program for news, will begin rolling out to local, national and independent publishers in the UK,” Ronan Harris, vice president and managing director of Google UK, said in a blog post and Ireland. .
“As part of our licensing agreements with publishers, we’re also launching the ability for readers to access certain paid wall content. This feature will give readers the opportunity to read more publisher content than they would have. access at the same time, while allowing publishers to encourage readers to become subscribers “.
Worldwide, Google has convinced 450 news publications to produce content for the Google News Showcase.
The feature has also been launched in Australia, Germany, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan and Argentina. Google said there are ongoing discussions in several other countries.
Long lasting battle
Technical giants like Facebook and Google have been increasingly pressured to pay media companies for their content.
Last October, Google said it would pay publishers $ 1 billion for news over the next three years.
However, when the Australian government proposed a new law that would force Google and Facebook to pay news publishers the right to link them to content in news feeds or search results, Google threatened to withdraw from its widely used search engine.
The proposed law in Australia is called the media bargaining code and is specifically targeted at Google and Facebook. It would force tech giants to negotiate payments with local publishers and broadcasters for content included in search results or sources of information. If they do not reach an agreement, a government-appointed arbitrator will decide the price.
Google has been pushing hard against the code and calling it “unreasonable” and “unfeasible.”
“Along with the unmanageable financial and operational risk if this version of the code became law, it would give us no choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia,” said Mel Silva, CEO of Google Australia and New Zealand , he told a Senate committee in Australia last month.
Scott Morrison, the Australian Prime Minister, said at a news conference that “we are not responding to threats”.