Google's policies about inclusion of small publishers in Google News, one of the biggest news platforms on the internet, are opaque and applied at random
There's been a lot of discussion about the future of publishing over the last few years, particularly as Facebook traffic began cratering … Tweets: @ow Tweets: Owen Williams / @ow : I've been trying to get approved in Google News for two years, but am always rejected. Google won't tell publishers why, or offer advice, and the process is completely broken, despite loud promises to support journalism http://char.gd/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Owen Williams' two-year rejection saga captures the small-publisher side of a relationship Google has since handled very differently at the top of the market: by 2021 it was paying for content outright, starting with News Corp's multi-year global partnership for 'significant payments'. The pattern that emerges across the coverage is a two-tier system — negotiated terms for large publishers, silent automated rejection for everyone else.
The opacity complaint also isn't isolated to News inclusion. UK publishers had already criticized Google for failing to explain its COVID-19 ad blocking and filtering decisions, and Google separately warned European publishers it would cut off their ad tools if they restricted reader-data harvesting — a consistent posture where the rules are set unilaterally and explained selectively.
First-order effects
- Small publishers applying to Google News get rejected with no stated reason or appeal path, leaving them locked out of one of the internet's largest news distribution surfaces while competitors who made it in keep the referral traffic.
Second-order effects
- With organic inclusion unreliable, distribution becomes something Google grants rather than something publishers earn — culminating in paid licensing vehicles like News Showcase, whose US launch slipped past Q1 2022 as many outlets found the offers underwhelming, per the related coverage.
Third-order effects
- If access to news platforms is discretionary and unexplained, the industry drifts toward a barbell: large publishers negotiate payments directly with Google while small ones depend on opaque algorithms they cannot audit — exactly the asymmetry that tends to draw regulator attention to platform gatekeeping.
The trend: News distribution is shifting from an open inclusion model toward bilateral deals between Google and large publishers, leaving small outlets dependent on processes they can't see or contest.