Google launches Showcase: agreements with publishers and media logos in a new information platform

Google launches Showcase in Spain.

The information available from the main search engine, one of the great channels of entry to the media around the world, changes in substance and form from today.

On the one hand, the agreements with publishers are extended with support for subscription information models (previously little compatible with this technology company) and, on the other, the presentation of news in Google News and Google Discover is remodeled.

Showcase consists of a series of panels that highlight the most relevant information of a medium or, at least, that publication chooses to show users, with the striking novelty that

, unlike the hitherto usual intermingling of content according to positioning and algorithmic calculations.

Thus, a media outlet selects around half a dozen articles, free access or linked to subscription, which are presented to the Internet user through specific spaces within Google News or Discover.

Until today, Spain had been left out of this content licensing program for publishers, which already

.

However, the focus of Showcase is regional and local, to the point that 90% of the media that are part lack a national character.

In Spain, the project gets off the ground after signing agreements with 60 publishing groups and more than 140 publishers, established one by one separately and therefore in line with the Californian company's global policy of avoiding as much as possible possible negotiation with the block publishers' guild.

These negotiations are carried out for the sake of confidentiality but also to the detriment of a possible position of strength of the publishers, who talk one by one with Google;

yes, those of Mountain View offer a huge gateway for online traffic and, with Showcase, perhaps also a reinforcement to the subscription systems that the so-called paywalls represent.

Google estimates that every month it sends more than 24,000 million visits to the websites of journalistic media around the world.

For their part, users now have more efficient access to sources or topics of interest, according to Google, which emphasizes that readers will find content selected by the editors themselves and will have a diverse range of brands informative.

Round trip from Google News

Showcase was released in late 2020;

although not in Spain, of course.

In June of that year, Google had announced a program that would help "participating media monetize their content through better ways of creating and distributing news that allow people to dig deeper into more complex stories, stay informed and access a world of very diverse topics and interests", with pioneering advances in Germany, Australia and Brazil.

The Spanish case is practically unique for Google News, the informative arm of the search engine (Discover focuses more on tastes and interests than on typical journalistic articles).

Last June,

by decision of the company itself.

The reform of the Intellectual Property Law of that time established an "inalienable" right to economic compensation for publishers, a consideration that Google strongly opposed, to the point of closing this service.

However, as this newspaper advanced, the new continental directive (emerged as a result of the proposal of the European Commission in 2015) has established new red lines for common Google News and less restrictive than those marked by Spanish copyright, so that, what in other nations meant limiting the company's use of publishers' rights, in this country translated into a more lax and conducive framework for the reopening of Google News, as indeed happened.

The company ensures that the media can now "freely decide how their content is located and monetized", a cover letter in which Showcase is called to acquire prominence.

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