> will display branded story panels curated by partner publishers
> “With News Showcase and the new integration of editorial content of media like Der Spiegel, Google shows that they are serious about supporting quality journalism in Germany,” Stefan Ottlitz, head of product development at Der Spiegel, said in an email.
It would be interesting to see how they choose the partners. Whatever they do, I would imagine new bias accusations being levied.
The press release suggested they chose Brazil and Germany as test markets and the logo wall appears to imply they grabbed ~10 to 15 news sources in each country.
Der Spiegel is about as obvious as a reasonable choice in a 15 item list as possible.
The bigger question is in the “timeline” feature how will different news sources be integrated. Aka news source 1 has one event on Jan 1, news source 2 has one on Jan 2, both news source 1 and 2 have one on Jan 3, all on the same topic....what do you show? You can’t show 15x every little development. And who makes that decision? And how? That piece seems controversial.
While the golden age of news publishing probably never came, I think this is a really bad development. Almost all publishers already made deals with Facebook. Now you have tech giants that also pay large publishers. Judge for yourself how this could lead to a plethora of conflicts of interest.
FWIW, news companies have already had very questionable relationships with these same tech companies. Not only is their ad revenue already coming through Facebook and Google, but they're already massively incentivized to give tech companies positive press.
Sundar Pichai only does exclusive interviews with blogs which positively cover Google, for instance, and an exclusive interview with Pichai is worth millions in ad revenue.
Apple is notorious for straight up cutting out journalists which produce critical coverage from their events.
People like Steven Levy get whole book deals based on exclusive access and interviews with tech company executives and employees. Unsurprisingly, his articles are always glowing coverage.
And Facebook has already grotesquely abused their trust, leading to the bankruptcy of many content creators. The $40 million fine handed down by the courts for that behavior is an utter miscarriage of justice.
>More than 200 publications in Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, the U.K. and Australia have signed up to the News Showcase program, with more markets to come, Google said in the statement.
Good, publishing industries being pillaged by big tech needs to end. I faintly remember all the "oh they'll just pack up and leave" voices when this was first announced. Large governments need to take note that they have bargaining power.
> “With News Showcase and the new integration of editorial content of media like Der Spiegel, Google shows that they are serious about supporting quality journalism in Germany,” Stefan Ottlitz, head of product development at Der Spiegel, said in an email.
It would be interesting to see how they choose the partners. Whatever they do, I would imagine new bias accusations being levied.