Google to pay publishers $1 billion over three years for their news

Google will pay publishers $1 billion over the next three years for their content, the company's latest effort to defuse tensions over its dominance of the news industry.

"This financial commitment—our biggest to date—will pay publishers to create and curate high-quality content for a different kind of online news experience," Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a blog post wrote.

"Google News Showcase is a new product that will benefit both publishers and readers: It features the editorial curation of award-winning newsrooms to give readers more insight on the stories that matter, and in the process, helps publishers develop deeper relationships with their audiences," Pichai noted.

"This approach is distinct from our other news products because it leans on the editorial choices individual publishers make about which stories to show readers and how to present them," Pichai said.

In Germany Google has signed up with German newspapers including Der Spiegel, Stern, Die Zeit, and in Brazil with Folha de S.Paulo, Band, and Infobae.