Google has signed contracts with more than 300 news sources in Germany, Hungary, France, Austria, the Netherlands, and Ireland, which allows it to share excerpts of their publications on Search. The Tech giant now says it is launching “a new tool to make offers to thousands more news publishers, starting in Germany and Hungary, and rolling out to other EU countries over the coming months.”
Within the Search panel, publishers will see the new tool that provides an “Extended News Preview (ENP)” agreement with Google. It will tell them exactly what the offer is for, how to sign up for it, and how to give feedback.
Google asserts that all offers under the program must meet the European Copyright Directive’s licensing regulations. Participants will have complete control over what appears on Search and how their content will be reviewed. They are also free to change their preferences at any point in time.
In 2019, the European Union enacted its contentious copyright law, mandating news aggregators to pay news publishers for excerpts of content that exceed “individual words or very short extracts.” One year later, Australia passed a legal code of conduct compelling businesses to compensate news agencies when they use their content.
When France began implementing the EU law, Google originally responded by deleting news previews in the country. In the end, though, the Tech. giant changed its tune and began signing agreements with publishers in Europe and Australia, including News Corp., to pay for their content.
The Tech. Giant also launched the News Showcase experience, which provides free access to some items that were previously restricted to subscribers only.
