After being in the spotlight alongside Facebook for not paying or giving credit to writers that publish their materials on their websites, Google is trying to make amends.
Google announced that it would pay publishers more than $1 billion over the next three years to license new content for a new product called Google News Showcase. It will display teasers made by #publishers for their articles, also accompanied by relevant pictures. When clicking on them, users land on the original websites where the news is published.
"I think a number of us in the ecosystem want to step up and enable a better future for news. This is a very big investment, our biggest investment today, but it really does build on our 20 years of efforts with the industry," read the statement of Brad Bender, Google's VP of product management for news.
So far, Google signed with almost 200 publications such as Der Spiegel, Folha de S. Paulo, and Stern. Users from Germany and Brazil can already access the feature, already available on Android.
Over time, the payment of publishers has been a recurrent problem for Google. In Australia, the regulators took measures to make Google pay for the posted content. However, the company fought back, stating that the norms could harm the ways Australian users are using services such as Google Search and YouTube.
After releasing the news, the Google stock price closed the trading session 1.39% higher.
Read more about controversies that involve Google here!
Sources: marketwatch.com, techcrunch.com