Google has announced a $1 billion USD (about $1.3 billion CAD) investment in partnerships with news publishers to create high-quality content for new story panels on Google News.
The tech giant has launched the initiative, which is called Google News Showcase, to create “a different kind of online news experience.”
“Google News Showcase is a new product that will benefit both publishers and readers: It features the editorial curation of award-winning newsrooms to give readers more insight on the stories that matter, and in the process, helps publishers develop deeper relationships with their audiences,” Google stated in a blog post.
Google News Showcase will first appear on Google News on Android and will then come to iOS in the future.
The tech giant says these panels will give participating publishers the ability to package the stories that appear within Google’s news products, and provide deeper storytelling and more context through features like timelines, bullets and related articles.
Google notes that it’s signed partnerships with nearly 200 publications across Canada, Australia, Brazil and Germany. Canadian publishers include Narcity media and Village Media, which operates news sites in several small cities.
It’s unknown how much money publishers will be able to make from this initiative. Although Google can direct a lot of traffic to publishers, that can only happen if people click on articles, instead of simply getting enough information from the blurb on the Search page.
With this new feature, it’s hoping to pay participating publishers for content, regardless of whether users click on their actual articles.
Google says that it wants to play its “part by helping journalists in the 21st century not jut survive, but thrive.”
Source: Google
