Google India’s latest stream- Google News Showcase has just been launched in India. It is a new online experience and licensing programme. According to this big search engine, Google, this new programme supports and incentivises new publishers to create premium quality content on Google’s News and Discovery platforms. This smart feature connects the readers with the news they need.
Google India is also stepping up its efforts to make the digital skills in news room and journalism stronger in schools across the country. The tech giant said that it will train and guide over 50,000 journalists and journalism students over the period of next three years,
Google said that it will also introduce few more programmes and services to help small level and mid-sized publications to achieve financial stability and sustainability- all under the GNI Digital Growth Program, which has already trained executives at almost a 100 Indian news organizations since it was launched last year.
The branch is built on news showcase deals and contracts which were signed by over 700 news publications in more than over a dozen of countries around the world. Some of the countries included are Germany, France, Italy, Argentina, Czechia, Australia, Japan, Canada, Brazil and the UK. More tha 90% of these agaencies represent small or local community news.
In a statement, Google said- “These investments will help people find quality journalism, contribute to the sustainability of news organizations, and expand our programs under the Google News Initiative — enabling newsrooms to engage their readers in new and compelling ways through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.”
This will help the content from small Indian Publishers and Partners in English and Hindi news to begin appear and featuring in dedicated News Showcase Panels in Google News Showcase and on Discover page of Google.
The IT giant said that it is committed to launch more in additional Indic languages further in the year. It will continue to add more and more languages in the near future. The company stated- “As part of our licensing agreements with publishers, we’re also paying participating news organizations to give readers access to a limited amount of pay walled content. This feature means readers will have the opportunity to read more of a publisher’s articles than they would otherwise be able to, while deepening readers’ relationships with publishers and encouraging them to subscribe.”