By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 23rd, 2024
After years of pressure from printing firms, Google has finally promised to pay an initial $1 billion to news publishers over the next three years.
Google LLC (NASDAQ: GOOGL) has revealed plans to pay news publishers $1 billion over the next three years. Before now, new publishers such as News Corp have been demanding payment for content from Google.
On the 1st of October, Google released a blog post titled “Our $1billion investment in partnership with news publishers.” According to the blog post, there will be additional financing in the future as Google CEO Sundar Pichai referred to the recent funding as an “initial $1 billion investment.”
Google Promises to Pay News Publishers
In addition, the CEO unveiled a new product called “Google News Showcase.” Pichai said Google would pay publishers to create quality content for the new mobile product. Initially, News Showcase will launch Google News on Android devices before appearing on iOS.
As noted in the blog post, Google News Showcase will appear on Google Discover and Search in the future. Also, Pichai said Google has partnered with nearly 200 publications for the newly launched news product. These publications spread across Germany, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and the UK.
For now, Google News Showcase will go live in two countries. Specifically, the blog said the product would roll out in Brazil and Germany today. The publishers in partnership with Google on the new project include Der Spiegel, Stern, Die Zeit, Folha de S.Paulo, Band, Infobae, El Litoral, GZH, WAZ, and SooToday.
As News Showcase expands, Pichai said the company has plans to extend publications to other countries, including India, Belgium and Netherlands.
The CEO added:
“Both News Showcase and our financial commitment-which will extend beyond the initial three years- are focused on contributing to the overall sustainability of our news partners around the world.”
Pichai noted the shift from other sources of news to the internet. Speaking further, he said:
“Alongside other companies, government and civic societies, we want to play our part by helping journalism in the 21st century not just survive, but thrive.”
Other Google Investments
Last month, Google released a report on its latest investments in Search and News. Google Fellow and Vice President, Search Pandu Nayak announced that the tech company had increased its investments in Search quality.
Explaining further, Nayak said the company conducts extensive testing to ensure that Google Search users get helpful results. Specifically, Google has carried out over 1 million tests on search quality. Now, the company executes more than a thousand tests every day.
In addition, Google has developed an Intelligence Desk team to monitor and identify potential information threats. Google’s product team then uses reports from the Intelligence Desk to run more extensive quality tests to ensure that users get relevant and reliable results on Search.
Considering the global health crisis, the vice president noted the company’s commitment to making reliable information accessible to its Search users.
Currently, GOOGL is up 1.41% to $1,487.10 over its previous close of $1,465.60. The company gained nearly 25% over the twelve months and over 10% in its year-to-date performance. In addition to recent increases, the tech giant jumped 1.06% over the past three months and 4.41% in the last five days. However, GOOGL fell 8.83% over the past month.