Google launches News Showcase in India with 30 publishers

Google on Tuesday announced the launch of its News Showcase product in India with 30 publishers including national, regional and local news organisations.

These include The Hindu Group, HT Digital Streams Ltd, Indian Express Group, ABP LIVE, India TV, NDTV, Zee News, Amar Ujala, Deccan Herald, Punjab Kesari, The Telegraph India, IANS (Indo Asian News Service), ANI, and many more.

“To support news organisations and readers, we’re introducing Google News Showcase, our new online experience and licensing program. This program incentivises and supports news publishers to curate high quality content on Google News and Discover platforms, connecting readers with the news they need,” said Brad Bender, VP, Product, News, Google.

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Content from Indian publisher partners in English and Hindi will begin to appear in dedicated News Showcase panels in Google News and on Discover, with support for more Indian languages to be added in the future, the company said in a statement. 

As part of the licensing agreements with publishers, Google will also pay participating news organisations to give readers access to a limited amount of paywalled content. This feature will enable readers to 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, the statement added.

Sanjay Gupta, Vice President, Google India, said,

“News Showcase is just one part of our overall commitment to the large and diverse Indian news ecosystem. Today, we’re also announcing the expansion of our Google News Initiative efforts to bolster journalist training efforts, and new programs to support over 800 small and mid-sized publications achieve financial sustainability with training in audience development and product innovation to support business success for news organisations.”

Under the Google News Initiative program, Google will expand its work to strengthen digital skills in newsrooms and journalism schools across India, with increased support from the News Lab to train 50 thousand journalists and journalism students  to aid reporting and combat misinformation online. 

With the GNI Digital Growth Program, Google will offer new business training workshops in audience development and product innovation, to help news organisations address the needs of their audiences, grow their readership and deepen reader engagement. These workshops will be available for free to Indian publishers, alongside the existing workshops to support business success for news organisations.

Google will also invest in product training sessions and implementation support to help more than 800 small and mid-sized Indian news organisations grow their digital ad revenue with the GNI advertising Lab, and will launch The GNI Transformation Lab, a more comprehensive program for 20 local small and mid-sized Indian news organisations to help them transform every aspect of their business to succeed online.

According to the company, Indian news publishers now join over 700 news publications globally, who have signed agreements for Google News Showcase in more than a dozen countries, including Germany, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, the UK Australia, Czechia, Italy and Argentina, with discussions underway in a number of other countries. More than 90 percent of the publications signed up around the world represent local, regional or community news.