Google has announced plans to pay partnered media publishers for content and offer some users access to free pay-walled news sites.
The details of the plan are still unknown but in a blog post, Google said they would launch “a licensing program to pay publishers for high-quality content for a new news experience” due to launch later this year.
According to Google’s Vice-President of product management, Brad Bender, Google will also offer to pay for free access for users to read pay-walled articles on a publisher’s site,” the statement said, without offering any further details.
The announcement is in response to pressure from governments and media groups around the world. Google has been accused of not paying news organizations for content and has faced legal battles in France and Australia.
In April, France’s competition regulator said the tech giant must start paying media groups for displaying their content, ordering it to begin negotiations after refusing for months to comply with Europe’s new digital copyright law.
And in early June, Google rejected an Australian ruling ordering it to pay hundreds of millions of dollars annually to compensate local news media under a government-ordered revenue-sharing deal.