For the past two decades, we’ve worked closely and collaboratively with the news industry on helping publishers evolve in the digital age. One of the major ways we support journalism is through Google News Showcase, our new product and licensing program that pays news publishers to curate content across Google News and Discover, fueled by our recent $1 billion investment in news. News Showcase also benefits readers by helping them understand complex stories and find the news organizations covering the issues, both locally and nationally, that matter most to them.
In the past six months, we’ve launched News Showcase in the U.K., Australia, Argentina, Brazil and Germany and signed deals with close to 600 publishers in over a dozen countries; over 90% of the publishers are considered local, regional or community newspapers. Today, we started rolling out News Showcase to users in Italy.
Now that publishers have been able to use News Showcase for a few months, we wanted to give an update on how it is working for the news organizations currently live on the product.
First, we’re thrilled by the amount of quality content our publisher partners are providing to readers through News Showcase. News organizations from the Evening Standard and The Financial Times in the U.K. to The Canberra Times, The Illawarra Mercury and The Saturday Paper in Australia, to Infobae, Página12, and El Día in Argentina, Der Spiegel, Stern and Die Zeit in Germany and Folha de S.Paulo and A Crítica in Brazil are producing more than 7,000 panels per week, ensuring there is a wide variety of timely, in-depth stories for readers.
