#Google says it will pay news publishers $1B over next 3 years

Google will pay $1 billion over the next three years to global news publishers that it licenses content from.

It is a milestone moment for Google, which has for years been accused of taking advantage of publisher content while simultaneously siphoning off their ad revenue.

The new product, dubbed Google News Showcase, will roll out in Germany and Brazil, where it has signed up major newspapers, and will later extend to countries including India, Britain, Australia and Canada.

“This financial commitment – our biggest to date – will pay publishers to create and curate high-quality content for a different kind of online news experience,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a blog post.

Publishers will submit curated content to Showcase, which will be presented on the Google News app and websites.

“This approach is distinct from our other news products because it leans on the editorial choices individual publishers make about which stories to show readers and how to present them,” Pichai said.

Google in June announced that it would pay certain overseas publishers to license “high-quality” content, a move that arrived as it had been facing mounting scrutiny outside the US.

In April, France’s competition authority ordered Google to pay French publishers for using their content while Australia has said it will force the company and Facebook to share advertising revenue with local media groups.

Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp, which owns the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, released a statement praising the move.

“We applaud Google’s recognition of a premium for premium journalism and the understanding that the editorial eco-system has been dysfunctional, verging on dystopian,” he said. “There are complex negotiations ahead but the principle and the precedent are now established.”

With Post wires.