In an interview with the Financial Times, Google's European Strategic Co-operative Director, Caro Dasaro Andos (Carlo D ' Asaro Biondo), said in a April 28 morning news that Google is considering a major overhaul of the controversial Google News service to help struggling publishers generate revenue online.
The comments coincided with the announcement of a coalition between Google and 8 major European newspaper groups to raise the digital skills and business model of news publishers.
The project, called "Digital News", will be a joint effort with 8 major press groups to launch product development and provide them with digital skills training, and will allocate € 150 million to digital projects over the next 3 years. The Financial Times, the Guardian, the French Echo, the Spanish national newspaper and the German Times weekly participated in the project.
Asked whether Google was prepared to adjust its own platform to help the news industry, not just to improve the digital skills of news publishers, Andos said: "These areas will be covered and I want to make more contributions to publishers, and I know we can help them." ”
Newspaper companies have been criticizing Google news for years, accusing them of plundering the flow of news sites, leading to the disadvantage of services that use online subscription models. The company closed its Google news website in Spain last year after it launched a new law requiring the company to pay for all copyright content.
After the "Prism door" disclosure, Google in Europe also facing adverse situation, the European Commission earlier this month, just launched a formal anti-monopoly lawsuit.
Google is considering how to be more friendly with content sites that use the toll wall, but many companies complain that the company's advertising business model is hurting them.
"Subscription or content-on-demand payment is one of the areas we want to develop. "said Bea Andos. He added that the company would also give higher weights to news sites with high visibility and expertise in some areas in search engines.
But he added: "It needs to be clear that the direction is not what we decide, but what consumers decide." If we believe that consumers are interested in different patterns or on-demand payment methods, they will be more willing to develop such technologies. ”
As the main critic of Google, German Springer and American News Corp. were not involved in this news project. But Andos says Google will still welcome them in the future, believing that pragmatic thinking always wins and that Google continues to win the trust it deserves.
The other three founding members include the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Dutch company NRC media and La Stampa of Italy.
Google to consider the revised news service: Help news organizations to generate revenue
