Google has unveiled "a licensing program to pay the media for high-quality content", a project that will be launched later this year and that advances in the line of remunerating the digital press for their journalistic work. .

"This program will help participating media to monetize their content through better ways of creating and distributing news that allow people to delve into more complex stories, stay informed and access a world of very diverse topics and interests," Google explained. The first collaboration agreements have been signed with local and national media in Germany, Australia and Brazil .

The company, which monopolizes most of the internet searches, faces different pressures around the world for remuneration to publishers for the information that feeds the Google search engine, where this company hosts advertising and charges advertisers. This has happened in Australia, for example, where last April a code of conduct was promoted so that Google and Facebook compensate publishers. In France, the entire press sector and competition authorities have demanded that this compensation be made effective, for which they are protected by the pioneering French law, resulting from the transposition of the new European directive on copyright .

The European directive, against which companies such as Google have done intense lobbying in Brussels, protects the authors of journalistic publications and advocates controlling the reproduction that news aggregators , such as Google News, may make of their articles. .

The Spanish exception

The Spanish case is especially complex, since the Google News tool closed in December 2014. Spanish intellectual property regulations established a "non-waivable" right of economic compensation for publishers, due to which Google preferred to close its service.

The North American company, which is accustomed to remembering the notoriety and visibility it provides to publishers, is making progress in specific agreements with specific publishing groups, according to the European directive, which sponsors them. The Spanish position, however, was exhaustive with remuneration , not dependent on decisions of one medium or another to appear in the search engine. Thus, community sources in Brussels have recognized EL MUNDO that the directive could lead in Spain to a paradoxical revival of Google News, with publishers accepting the conditions of the Californian technology.

"We will start with some media from a number of countries and soon we will reach more," said the Mountain View-based company, in a statement signed by Brad Bender, vice president of Product Management for the news division of the giant of Internet.

In the initial announcement are statements by the German group Spiegel , to which the eponymous weekly belongs; Australian Solstice Media, owners of InDaily; and of Diários Associados, which controls, among others, Correio Braziliense; This leads us to believe that these three publishers have already given their approval.

Divide and conquer?

As the Financial Times mentions in a report on the matter, the platforms could resort to a strategy of dividing publishers, avoiding attending to bulk demands from the entire sector. For example, the German group Axel Springer has spent years demanding before Brussels that measures be taken for a fair remuneration for their journalistic work on third-party digital platforms.

"In recent months, the covid-19 has generated new and unimaginable pressures in the media industry , affecting the entire sector in aspects such as the creation of quality journalism or the continuity of traditional business models," he acknowledges. Google, which has allocated funds to more than 5,300 local media around the world through the Google News Initiative, has enabled fees for the publication of ads in the Google ad manager and has launched a campaign with $ 15 million from local news.

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