Google will pay partnered media publishers in three countries and offer
some users free access to paywalled news sites, the tech giant said
Thursday.
The announcement comes after legal battles in France and Australia over Google’s refusal to pay news organizations for content.
In a blog post the firm said they would launch “a licensing program to
pay publishers for high-quality content for a new news experience” due
to launch later this year.
Brad Bender, Google’s vice-president of product management, said they
had been in discussions with partnered publishers — including the
Spiegel Group in Germany, Schwartz media in Australia and Brazil’s
Diarios Associados — for several months, “with more to come.”
“Google will also offer to pay for free access for users to read
paywalled articles on a publisher’s site,” the statement said, without
offering any further details.
Bender said the program will help publishers “monetize their content through an enhanced storytelling experience.”
He added it would build on the 2018 Google News Initiative, a $300
million project that aimed to tackle disinformation online and help news
sites grow financially.
It comes after growing calls for internet tech titans, notably Google, to pay for content.
A number of European and global publications — including AFP — have
called on the European Union to adopt laws requiring internet companies
to pay for the material they produce.
In April, France’s competition regulator said the firm must start paying
media groups for displaying their content, ordering it to begin
negotiations after refusing for months to comply with Europe’s new
digital copyright law.
And earlier this month, Google rejected an Australian ruling that it pay
hundreds of millions of dollars per year in compensation to local news
media under a government-imposed revenue-sharing deal.
AFP
