To fight fake news, Google is launching a program that would focus on journalism. Called as the Google News Initiative, this program also aims to help publishers earn more revenues.
Google launched this program last Tuesday, and it offers publishers a new monetization model online. This monetization, according to Google, is called the Subscribe with google.
This Google News Initiative also introduces Outline, an open-source tool which helps news companies set-up an access on the internet for journalists.
The search giant added that Subscribe Google works well with academic institutions to fight the proliferation of fake news.
In a statement, Google senior vice president and chief business officer Philipp Schindler said, “A great search engine by its definition depends on access to the open web…. The last thing you want to see is a search engine that is not delivering quality internet and is quickly becoming a race to the bottom.”
“If you’re not successful, we’re not successful,” he said, adding that Google has pledged $300 million for the project for a period of three years.
It, however, did not disclose how the resources would be spent. Google has admitted that $12.6 billion was paid to media outfits and drove 10 billion clicks a month to their websites for free last year.
How does Subscribe with Google works?
This new initiative allows readers to pay for whatever content provided by several news organizations. Google accredits these news organizations before they published content on the online platform.
Apart from this, using the initiative allows users to log in using their Google account credentials. The company earns a revenue from the shared subscriptions of the program. Several companies were named already as launch partners by Google.
These are FT.com, The Washington Post, and McClatchy Company publications, and Miami Herald, among others.
