Google is chatting with publishers about potentially paying to include their content in a news product, according to The Wall Street Journal.
That should be exciting. Many have probably noticed that there are media that actually want money for Google to find and display short snippets of content and thus land visitors on the website of a medium. Keyword: ancillary copyright law.
On the other hand, there has been the “Google News Initiative” for a long time and there is new news for the German market. Google will license content from media companies. In other words: pay for the media to display content.
Google wants to start a new message format and use exactly that content. According to Google, the new program should help participating publishers to increase the visibility of their content through an improved storytelling experience.
The new format allows readers to delve deeper into “challenging stories”, stay up to date and discover new topics and interests – but what exactly is behind it is not known.
The new program will first be tested with publishers from Germany, Australia, and Brazil.
As part of the initiative, Google also pays, where available, for free access to paid articles on the websites of individual publishers. This allows publishers who use a paywall to increase their reach and give users the opportunity to read content that they normally don’t see.
