American multinational technology company; Google has set up a 1 billion dollars initiative with the sole purpose of paying all news publishers that create content on the company’s newest product; the Google News Showcase.
The product; Google News Showcase will first make an appearance on Google News for Android and will offer rolling panels for any partner publisher looking to curate stories to be shown on Google News.
According to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Google; Sundar Pichai, “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’s financial commitment pledge and the Google News Showcase Platform is expanding on an earlier Licensing Program that also committed to support publishers who report important news inspire of numerous financial challenges.
Google’s Vice President of Products Management; Brad Bender made it known that the news licensing program in questions would make it possible for users to access specific premium articles which were previously only accessible via paywalls. This will effectively give users who could not afford the premium subscription fees, more access.
Google’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO); Sundar Pichai also revealed that the Google News Showcase which was launched in Germany and Brazil on the 1st of October 2020, will also be launched in other countries in the coming months.
The tech giant; Google, has already finalized numerous partnerships with around 200 publishers in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom. It is also looking to expand and secure partnerships in Belgium, India and Netherlands. Those will however depend on whether or not Google is able acquire the needed regulatory approvals from the individual countries.
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