Google will pay publishers $1B+ through 2023 to create and curate high-quality journalism for the new Google News Showcase, starting in Germany and Brazil
to help convince governments not to take a whole lot more than that Sundar Pichai / The Keyword : Our $1 billion investment in partnerships with news publishers Byron Kaye / Reuters : Google drops Australia from News Showcase launch amid regulator rancour Shoshana Wodinsky / Gizmodo : Google to Journalists: Shut Up and Take the Money Kerry Flynn / CNN : Google agrees to pay news publishers more than $1 billion Natalia Drozdiak / Bloomberg : Google to Pay Publishers Over $1 Billion for News Content Benjamin Mullin / Wall Street Journal : Google Pledges $1 Billion in Licensing Payments to News Publishers Michael Grothaus / Fast Company : Google will pay publishers $1 billion to quell claims of unfairly profiting from their content Anthony Ha / TechCrunch : Daily Crunch: Google commits $1B to pay publishers Mehreen Kasana / Input : Google's $1 billion fund for news publishers sounds like fancy PR Lucinda Southern / Digiday : ‘Quite cynical’: Publishers leery about Google's $1 billion news licensing pot PYMNTS.com : Google Makes A Big New Move Into News Aggregation Manuel Vonau / Android Police : Google is spending $1 billion to bring you a new Google News feature The Irish Times : Technology giant Google pledges $1bn to pay for news Christian Zibreg / iDownloadBlog.com : Google will finally start paying some publishers for news content Tweets: Joshua Benton / @jbenton : Re: Google's $1 billion to publishers — Does anyone see a scenario in which Google News Showcase generates any actual revenue for Google? Much less the $1 billion it would take to make it reasonable as a pure bottom-line decision? Dan Gillmor / @dangillmor : Picking the winners: Is that really the solution? https://twitter.com/... @spj_tweets : “The Google News Showcase, launching first in Brazil and Germany, includes a new set of features that Google hopes will help guide readers to higher-quality information and boost traffic to participating publishers' websites.” https://www.axios.com/... Jason Hirschhorn / @jasonhirschhorn : Feed a dying person with an IV in the last 5 mins of the life you helped take. https://www.axios.com/... @googlenews : Google is making its biggest move yet to support the future of journalism. We're launching a new news experience called Google News Showcase with an initial $1 billion investment in partnerships with news publishers and the future of news. 1/ https://blog.google/... Lorenz Matzat / @lorz : “... this is at its core: a way for Google to send money to publishers in a way that it hopes will address a PR problem and stave off hungry governments.. .... What could possibly make a company want to give away 0.15% of its revenue? The threat of someone else taking 10% of it.” https://twitter.com/... Millie Tran / @millie : Note which countries to start — Germany, UK and Australia specifically given antitrust scrutiny and lawsuits https://techcrunch.com/... @niemanlab : It's better to have a billion dollars than to not have a billion dollars. (Or so we're told.) But remember: Google's interactions with the news industry are always about its interests, not publishers'. https://www.niemanlab.org/... https://twitter.com/... @swodinsky : gonna keep screaming abt how digital journalism's being bankrolled by an industry that's not only a massive antitrust issue, but a massive antitrust issue with racist, classist and homophobic undertones https://twitter.com/... William Vambenepe / @vambenepe : Proud to launch Google News Showcase in Brazil and Germany today. Lots more to come. I can neither confirm nor deny that the international rollout will continue to be ordered based on the number of World Cup wins. https://twitter.com/... Brad Bender / @bradbender1 : Really proud to work for a company that is leaning in to support journalism like this and thrilled with all of the work the team has done to launch Google News Showcase today (1/3) https://twitter.com/... Rasmus Kleis Nielsen / @rasmus_kleis : “Google's interactions with the news industry are always fundamentally about its interests, not publishers'” @jbenton writes. “There's nothing unusual or wrong with that, really.” Regular reminder: platforms are for-profit companies, not philanthropists. https://www.niemanlab.org/... Emily Bell / @emilybell : Where there is a policy vacuum around news support, the platforms are making their own policies. Where it exists externally to the platforms - Australia for instance - there is resistance https://www.bloomberg.com/... Dominic Ponsford / @domponsford : It is just over three years since Press Gazette launched its Duopoly campaign calling for a fairer deal between Facebook and Google and the news industry. It looks like Google has come up with the goods in a big way. https://twitter.com/... Ross Maghielse / @maghielse : Great analysis of the “Google's giving $1 billion to publishers” announcement. It's $1 billion spread across the globe over three years. It leaves everything pretty much where it already is and is arguably more beneficial to Google than to publishers. https://www.niemanlab.org/... David Beard / @dabeard : I mean, it's good news, but ... “What could possibly make a company want to give away 0.15% of its revenue? The threat of someone else taking 10% of it.” https://www.niemanlab.org/... Dan Froomkin / @froomkin : Lots of obvious caveats and questions, but this is at least directionally a good thing. Identifying quality news outlets is key. I will also note that a bunch of youse laughed at me when I suggested such a thing last February: https://medium.com/... https://twitter.com/... Alana Fearon / @lansy12 : “Alphabet Inc.'s Google said Thursday it would pay publishers more than $1 billion over the next three years to license news content for a new product called Google News Showcase”... About bloody time. What's happening @Facebook ? Nikki Usher, Ph.D. / @nikkiusher : So if you are ok with Google paying off publishers as a band-aid for problems they called, well, you shouldn't be https://www.axios.com/... - and my take, here for @openmarkets says why https://www.journalismliberty.org/ ... Mathew Ingram / @mathewi : This Google news is going to be a win for a handful of already leading publishers, and a finger in the eye of everyone else IMO https://uk.reuters.com/... @slpng_giants : VERY conflicted on this. 1) @google has already pretty much destroyed the news industry. They shouldn't get credit for trying to save it. 2) They should have been doing this all along. 3) Do we want Google deciding which publishers survive and which ones don't? https://twitter.com/... Sundar Pichai / @sundarpichai : Proud to announce our biggest commitment to the future of news yet: the launch of Google News Showcase - a new kind of news experience for publishers and readers - along with a $1 billion global investment in partnerships with publishers. https://blog.google/... Roger McNamee / @moonalice : Step 1: Google diverts billions in news industry revenue into its own coffers. Step 2: Google offers $1 billion to cash-starved news organizations to minimize political fall from undermining democracy. Step 3: press falls for it. https://www.ft.com/... Quentin Dempster / @quentindempster : What's this? @Google is moving in Europe to pay for copyrighted news content from media publishers. If Google accepts the principle of copy rights it should have no trouble in fair compensation for Australian publishers .. including the ABC and SBS. @PaulFletcherMP @ItaButtrose https://twitter.com/... Luther Lowe / @lutherlowe : This isn't new, just a 3x increase in the financial commitment Google made a few years back. But as with all Google's largess, it comes with strings attached. Embrace AMP & other G products + help us lobby for our agenda https://www.ft.com/... https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Pierre Chappaz / @pierrechappaz : Google becomes a global publisher, while publishers become content producers for them. https://blog.google/... Martina Pennisi / @martinapennisi : Publications including Der Spiegel, Stern and Handelsblatt will supply article previews for a coming Google feature: Google News Showcase https://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ Charlie Beckett / @charliebeckett : Interesting. Google is going to pay a selection of publishers for content and share audience data. Raises all the usual questions about who gets the money but seems significant. https://twitter.com/... Sara Fischer / @sarafischer : Some details: - Launching first in Germany in Brazil (I spoke with a publisher in Brazil who said the money's been really helpful) - News “panels” allow pubs to curate their own stories in one place and eventually they can include things like audio and video as well as text https://twitter.com/... Sara Fischer / @sarafischer : 🚨🚨 Google is paying publishers *more than $1 billion* to create and curate high-quality content for a new news product it's rolling out over the next 3 years. — It's by far the tech giant's biggest commitment to publishers ever https://www.axios.com/... See also Mediagazer