Google Launching ‘News Showcase’ Licensing Program in US Next Month

The Google News homepage is displayed on an iPhone in Ottawa, Canada, on Feb. 28, 2023. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick

Google will debut its “News Showcase” product in the United States this summer, three years after it launched it in Germany and Brazil.

In a June 8 blog post, Chris Jansen, head of local news and global partnerships at Google, said the product will work in partnership with more than 150 news publications based in nearly 40 states, 90 percent of which will be local or regional.

Publications will include the Duluth News Tribune in Minnesota; NOLA.com and The Times-Picayune in Louisiana; The Oaklandside and La Opinión in California; La Raza in Illinois; and the Orlando Weekly in Florida.

In addition, Google has struck deals with global and national publications including the Associated Press, Bloomberg, El Diario, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal, among others.

Google first launched its News Showcase licensing program for news organizations in Brazil and Germany in 2020 and has since expanded to 22 countries globally, including Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, with more than 2,300 participating publications.

The program involves Google paying publishers to offer readers access to a limited amount of their paywalled stories, which the tech giant says will grant readers the opportunity to read more of a publisher’s articles than they would otherwise be able to, and encourage them to subscribe to the publication.

“Journalists select important stories to include in their curated News Showcase panels and add useful context to help readers understand key issues,” Jansen wrote. “The panels then appear in Google News and Discover, sending readers directly to full articles on a publisher’s website.”

“This helps publishers deepen relationships with their audiences and gives them more direct control of presentation and branding,” he added.

Google has already splashed out $1 billion on the news aggregation service.

Battle Over Paid News Content

While it is not clear exactly how much each of the publishers is being paid, as part of a deal struck between Google and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the latter is set to receive a “significant” amount, reportedly up to $50 million a year.

Meanwhile, The New York Times is reportedly set to receive $100 million a year over three years after signing a similar deal with Google, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The program comes as governments in multiple countries have passed or are considering passing legislation that will require tech giants including Google and Facebook parent company Meta to pay for news content.

In 2019, companies including Meta and Google agreed to pay French publishers an unspecified amount for their content after the European Union updated copyright rules.

In 2021, the Australian federal legislature adopted legislation that resulted in $140 milliion in payments to news publications from both Google and Facebook last year, despite the two firms initially threatening to pull their services there. Canada and New Zealand are currently exploring adopting similar legislation.

Elsewhere on June 8, Google announced that its Google News Initiative is launching new partnerships with five news associations to provide financial grants and training to nearly 1,000 local publications across the United States.

The unspecified funding will help local publishers overcome tech challenges, and bolster strategies aimed at increasing audience growth, and sponsorship revenue, according to the tech giant.

In addition, the company is updating a tab on Google News to help local publications surface more frequently on Google News and give readers an easier way to find news.