Google News Showcase, our new product and licensing program backed by our recent $1 billion global investment in news, will begin rolling out with Czech publishers starting today.
Czechia is the first Central and Eastern European country to launch News Showcase, and this new online experience will pay particular attention to the needs of readers who are looking for news that matters to them and their community. The publishers who are taking part at this stage include Echo Media, Economia, Forum 24, Internet Info and N media and their publications Aktuálně, Deník N, Echo24, Euro, Finance, FORUM 24, iHNed, Lupa, Měšec, Podnikatel and Respekt. These agreements take into account the rights outlined in Article 15 of the European Copyright Directive for specific online uses of press publications, which do not apply to hyperlinks and very short excerpts.
More than 600 news publications globally have now signed deals for News Showcase in more than a dozen countries, including Australia, Germany, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, the U.K. and Argentina,with discussions underway in a number of other countries. More than 90% of the publications signed up around the world represent local, regional or community news.
“Economia has always been a pioneer in promoting paid digital content,” says Zuzana Řezníčková, the chairman of the board of directors of Economia, one of the leading economic news outlets in the Czech Republic. “The News Showcase product provides a good opportunity for this and Economia is happy to be among the first ones to check how it’ll work in the Czech market. The principles behind Google News Showcase present for us the right and fair way to distribute digital content.”
With News Showcase panels, news organizations can curate their content in a number of different ways to help readers get more context about a story and direct them to the full articles on the publishers’ websites. This drives valuable traffic to those websites, enabling them to grow their audiences and deepen their relationships with readers.
“We believe that Google News Showcase will allow us to present the quality news content of Deník N to a large audience in an innovative and attractive way,” says Ján Simkanič, publisher of Deník N, the Czech independent daily newspaper. “And we hope that many visitors will become our subscribers, for whom trusted content is an important value.”
