Google pays ‘high quality content’ to local news agencies

On June 25, Google said it would introduce a new program, paying for “high-quality content” of publishers posted on its new service. The service is expected to launch by the end of 2020 on the News and Discover platform.

It will initially include local newspapers, such as Germany’s Der Spiegel, InQueensland and Australia’s InDaily and Brazil’s Diarios Associados. According to Google, where allowed, they will let readers read free paid articles of news sites.

Brad Bender, vice president of product management for Google News, writes on the blog that he is in discussions with more partners to sign in the coming months. Google’s move is in response to a call from antitrust regulators in France and Australia, asking them to pay for information. It marked a change in direction from Google, which for years rejected the publisher’s proposal.

France’s competition authority Autorite de la Concurrence announced in April that Google had to pay publishers and news agencies for reusing their content. Meanwhile, the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission is tasked with creating a set of rules that require digital platforms to share revenue from news.

These pressures are rising in the context of the publishing industry reporting a sharp decrease in advertising revenue due to the epidemic. It is in a bigger battle between technology firms and publishing firms over copyright issues.

The European Union in 2019 adopts copyright law reform, which gives more protection to news agencies to ensure they are paid fairly when their news goes live online. Regulations put significant pressure on news aggregation services like Google News because they will have to pay for the use of headlines and headlines of articles.

Du Lam (According to CNBC)