Google, on Tuesday, launched its Showcase news platform in India with 30 domestic news publishers. This development comes at a time when the nation is seeking for authentic information about COVID related updates and trying not to fall prey to the fake ones.
“Today’s announcement comes at a particularly challenging moment in India, with Indians seeking out authoritative news and information as the COVID-19 crisis deepens”, said Google.
Google’s service was globally launched late last year in more than 12 countries, including Germany, Brazil, and the United Kingdom. India is the latest one to join the list. Google News Showcase is a new online experience and licensing program that licenses text and other assets, and incentivises for curated contents.
When readers click on the link they are taken directly to the publisher news site where they can read the full article. This program supports news publishers to curate high quality content on Google’s News and Discover platforms, connecting readers with the news they need.
Google while explaining the benefit of News Showcase said, “It adds to the sustainability of news businesses where News Showcase partners receive a fixed monthly fee for curating their articles on News Showcase, and in some cases providing access to articles behind their paywall so that readers can see the value of becoming subscribers and publishers can build a relationship with readers”.
For the end user, News Showcase panels allow readers to dive deeper into a story and see a list of important articles updated multiple times per day by their favourite and trusted publishers.
Publishers receive monthly fees who have partnered with Google for the service. News Showcase is not a pay-per-click model, anything publishers get in terms of additional traffic from story panels or new subscribers is on top of that fee.
Content from Indian publisher partners in English and Hindi will begin to appear in dedicated News Showcase panels over Google News and on Discover. Google News Showcase story panels are now live in the Google News App while it is starting to roll out on Discover on iOS soon, and will be visible to Indian users in the coming days. Discover is already available on Android through the Google app.
“Over the coming months we will bring more partners onboard and our goal is to add support for other language publishers in India. We fully recognize India’s large and diverse news ecosystem and they all have different needs”, Google added.