Amid mounting pressure from media houses urging technology platforms to pay a fair price and share a part of the advertising revenue for featuring articles, Google had launched its global licensing program, News Showcase, in India with top publishers.

Last October they took initiative to pay publishers for news content and allows them to provide limited access to pay-walled stories for users. Showcase is part of Google’s $1-billion investment to support quality journalism. Thirty Indian Publisher has sealed with Google’s agreement to offer access to some of their content named as HT Digital Streams Ltd, The Hindu Group, Indian Express Group, ABP LIVE, India TV, NDTV, Zee News, Amar Ujala, Deccan Herald, Punjab Kesari, The Telegraph India, Indo Asian News Service (IANS) and Asian News International (ANI).

The content from the publishers will start appearing in News Showcase story panels on Google News and on Discover pages in both English and Hindi. Many more local languages will be added in the future. Also, pay participating organizations to give access to readers to a limited amount of paywalled content.

News Showcase is a curated product where Google will pay publishers for a certain number of articles, but not for the content that appears on its search engine. News articles appearing on search are monetized by Google, but the news organization does not get paid for it. They have to pay much more and compensate all publishers for original reporting. The News Showcase product launch is to appease publishers globally and it is unlikely to make much of a difference. Google will continue to benefit from the credibility of the content that news organizations are producing.