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.
Silicon Valley Company has signed an agreement with 120 British news publishers, including The Financial Times and Reuters, who will be paid a license fee to produce news stories for the Google News Showcase. Reports suggest that publishers will receive a few million dollars a year from Google.
The Arrangements
The feature will remain in the Google News mobile app and in Google Discover, Google’s feed curated on mobile devices containing articles and videos.
When users click on an issue in the Google News app or on Google Discover they will be taken to the full article on the publisher’s site.
“Google News Showcase, our new product experience and licensing program for news, will begin rolling out with local, national and independent publishers in the U.K.,” said Ronan Harris, vice president and managing director at Google U.K. and Ireland, in a blog Wednesday.
“As part of our licensing agreements with publishers, we’re also launching the ability for readers to access select paywall content. This feature will give readers the opportunity to read more of a publisher’s content than they would otherwise have access to, while enabling publishers to encourage readers to become a subscriber.”
Worldwide, Google has approved 450 news publications to produce Google News Showcase content.
Elsewhere
This feature has also been introduced in Australia, Germany, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan and Argentina. Google said negotiations are ongoing in many other countries.
Tech giants like Facebook and Google have come under increasing pressure to pay media companies for their content.
Last October, Google said it will pay publishers $1 billion for news over the next three years.
What Is It Like In Australia?
However, when the Australian Government proposed a new law that would force Google and Facebook to pay news publishers for the right to link to their content in news feeds or search results, Google threatened to pull its widely used search engine from the country.
The proposed law in Australia is dubbed the news media bargaining code and it’s targeted specifically at Google and Facebook. It would force tech giants to negotiate payments with local publishers and broadcasters for content included in search results or news feeds. If they cannot strike a deal, a government-appointed arbitrator will decide the price.
Google has been actively seeking this code, calling it “irrational” and “ineffective.”
“Coupled with the unmanageable financial and operational risk if this version of the Code were to become law, it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia,” Mel Silva, managing director for Google Australia and New Zealand, told a Senate committee in Australia last month.
Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister, told a news conference that “we don’t respond to threats.”
