Google is an American multinational technology company that specializes in Internet-related services and products, which include online advertising technologies, a search engine, cloud computing, software, and hardware. Google recently announced the launch of its global product called News Showcase in India.
Launched in October 2020, News Showcase is a global vehicle to pay news publishers for their content online. It also allows partnering publishers to curate content and provide limited access to paywalled stories for users.
Google has signed licensing agreements with publishers for editorial curation and it will also pay participating news organizations to give readers access to a limited amount of paywalled content. News Showcase is currently live across multiple countries, including UK, Germany and Australia with over 700 news publications. Google has sealed agreements with 30 Indian publishers to offer access to some of their content on News Showcase, including HT Digital Streams Ltd, The Hindu Group, Indian Express Group, ABP LIVE, India TV, NDTV, Zee News, Amar Ujala, Deccan Herald, Punjab Kesari, The Telegraph India, IANS (Indo Asian News Service), and ANI. The content from these publishers will begin to appear in dedicated News Showcase panels in Google News and on Discover pages in English and Hindi. Support for more local languages will be added in succeeding years. Readers can expect easier access to news from English and Hindi media, including The Telegraph. Moreover, Google also announced that under the Google News Initiative (GNI) programme, it will train 50,000 journalists and journalism students in strengthening their digital skills to aid reporting and combat misinformation online.
It will also invest in product training sessions and implementation support to help more than 800 small- and mid-sized Indian news organizations and growing their digital ad revenue with its existing GNI advertising lab. It will launch The GNI Transformation Lab, a programme for 20 local small- and mid-sized Indian news organizations to help them transform every aspect of their business to succeed online. The GNI Digital Growth Programme, will offer new business free training workshops in audience development and product innovation. Google News Showcase content is available within the Google News app on both iOS and Android apps, you may also access it via the mobile web. It has a user-friendly interface to access news across major publishers of the country.
