Google has inked agreements with over 300 news publications in Germany, Hungary, France, Austria, the Netherlands and Ireland that would allow it to publish snippets of their stories on Search. The tech giant has announced the development in a blog post, where it has also launched new tool that would make it easier for a lot more news publishers in Europe to get paid for their content.
Publishers can find the new tool that offers an Extended News Preview (ENP) agreement with Google within the Search console. It will include information on what the offer is for exactly, how they can sign up for it and how to provide feedback. Google says all offers under the program are consistent with the rules for licensing content under the European Copyright Directive. Participants will have full control over what will appear on Search and how their content will be previewed. They can also change their preferences anytime.
The European Union passed its controversial copyright law back in 2019, requiring news aggregators to pay news publishers for snippets of content that go beyond "individual words or very short extracts." A year later, Australia created a mandatory code of conduct that would also require companies to pay news outlets when they use their content. Google initially responded by removing news previews in France when the country started implementing the EU law. The tech giant eventually changed its tune, though, and started inking deals to pay publishers for their content across Europe and Australia, including News Corp. It also launched the News Showcase experience that offers some paywalled articles for free.