After successfully launching the product in over 20 countries, Google is bringing Google News Showcase to the US this summer, reports the Wall Street Journal. The tech giant first announced the program in October 2020 when the company pledged $1 billion to partner with news publishers to share their news content. The program will pay publishers to create and curate high-quality content.

“Google News Showcase is a new product that will benefit both publishers and readers: It features the editorial curation of award-winning newsrooms to give readers more insight on the stories that matter, and in the process, helps publishers develop deeper relationships with their audiences,” said Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, in the October 1, 2020 announcement.

A new news experience

Google described Google News Showcase as a new type of news experience, featuring story panels that appear across Google, including on News and Discovery. Publishers can package their stories to appear within Google’s news products, controlling their editorial voice and their brand.

The story panels include key facts, lists of important stories of the day, timelines, and related articles. The goal of this approach is for publishers to deepen their relationship with their readers and to provide relevant context around news shared via News Showcase. Through the showcase product, readers can connect directly with publishers.

“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.

The tech company shared how News Showcase works in this explainer:

At launch, Google News Showcase had partnerships with nearly 200 publications in Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, the UK and Australia. As the program progressed, Google published regular updates of new audiences, partnerships and features on its blog. An early feature Googled added was the ability of users to access select paywalled content, paid to certain publishers by Google. Google also made it easier for readers to access local content for publishers they follow by adding daily updates on local stories and lists of recommended articles, selected by their publishing partners.

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A year into News Showcase

In November 2021, Google shared how the product was working a year after launch.

“Our goal is to help publishers more deeply engage with their readers and to help readers find, follow and support the news organizations covering the issues that matter to them. One year in, we continue to learn, update and expand the product, and we’ve seen strong, steady numbers both in terms of the number of publishers signing on for the product and how readers are interacting with the content,” said Brad Bender, VP product management, news, in a November 16, 2021 blog post.

First year statistics:

• Google has signed deals with over 1,000 news publishers in more than a dozen countries.
• More than 90% of the publications publish local or community news.
• News Showcase has been launched in India, Japan, Germany, Brazil, Austria, the UK, Australia, Czechia, Italy, Columbia, Argentina, Canada and Ireland (as of November 2021).
• Publishers have created over 1 million News Showcase panels that have received 1.5 million follows by readers.

Google News Showcase in the US

So, what can readers in the US expect? Showcase will feature more than 150 US publications including national outlets like Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal and local outlets like the Duluth News Tribune and Orlando Weekly. Google has not disclosed what they are paying publishers for creating and curating story panels or when they will begin rolling the product out in the US. As of this writing, Google News Showcase is not yet available. Visitors to the site will see this message.

Insider Take

What is this really about? Is Google really trying to save the news industry by paying publishers for access to news, or are they trying to negotiate a more palatable arrangement than what they expect to come out of pending “journalism preservation” legislation?

Google can paint this as a magnanimous gesture on their part, but we think they want to remain in control. They are heading the legislation off at the pass by negotiating with publishers in advance of the passage of federal and state (California) legislation that will force them to pay for including publishers’ news results in Google Search and across other Google news products.

To the extent that publishers will get an extra revenue stream from Google, this is a good thing. Publishers can use a much-needed lifeline, especially as companies like Meta bail on their publisher relationships. But Google doesn’t do things out of the goodness of its heart. They do what’s good for Google.

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