Australians suffering from anxiety due to the looming threat of switching to Bing for their search results received some welcome news on Friday. If the country’s Legislators move forward over plans to force Google to pay news providers, the technology giant has launched a small paid news platform in Australia.
For months, authorities in the country at the bottom have been urging Facebook and Google to work together to draft legislation that would charge mega-platforms a fee for news that appears in social feeds or search results. And the companies did everything in their power to explain why they did not like the plan. (TLDR: It’s hard and expensive.) Facebook threatened to get news from his network in Australia, and Google threatened to completely block searches in the country. But on Thursday, Google showed signs of concession announced launching News Showcase for Australian users.
According to the company’s statement, seven local publications have entered into an agreement with Google to provide news content for an unknown amount to be included in the news program. The stores include The Canberra Times, The Illawarra Mercury, The Saturday Paper, Crikey, The New Daily, InDaily and The Conversation. The News Showcase is part of a $ 1 billion program Google was launched in 2020, designed to support news publishers. In October, Google said it was pause a planned Australian launch while negotiating with lawmakers, but the company apparently changed its mind.
In a blogpos, Google said that the content of its partners appears in panels in different places in its products. This is how it works:
The panels will appear across Google News on Android, iOS and the mobile web, and in Discover on iOS, bringing high value traffic to a publisher’s website. We also plan to bring News Showcase to Search, as well as the other surfaces of Google News and Discover in the future. Each article linked in a News Showcase panel takes the reader directly to the corresponding page on a publisher’s website, allowing publishers to grow their business further by showing ads and subscription opportunities to users.
G / O Media can get a commission
The launch of the news product coincides with the start of an inquiry into parliament the draft legislation, According to Reuters. In its current state, the law aims to create bargaining conditions between media and technology platforms to negotiate reasonable fees. In case it is not possible to determine on corresponding terms, a government panel will determine the price of fees.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday told reporters that he had a ‘constructive meeting’ with Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, but Morrison does not appear to be retiring. “At the end of the day, they understand that Australia sets the rules for the operation of these things,” the prime minister said. “And I was very clear how I saw it play out.”
It is unclear how the News Showcase is received by media companies in Australia, but a spokeswoman for one of the country’s largest news organizations, Nine, told the Guardian that the program is just another example of monopolistic practices. “It should all be on their terms and it is not an approach we will participate in. We support the legislation that the government is proposing as the best way to ensure a fair payment for our content,” the spokesman said.