GOOGL Alphabet Inc

By Benjamin Mullin 

This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (March 21, 2018).

Google unveiled a three-year, $300 million commitment to help news organizations adapt to the digital age, the search giant's latest olive branch to a publishing industry that has been critical of its dominance over information and digital advertising.

In New York on Tuesday, the company announced the launch of the Google News Initiative, which it says is designed to help news organizations strengthen quality journalism, develop new business models and upgrade their technology.

As part of the initiative, Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., detailed several efforts to help publishers drive more subscription revenue, under the umbrella of a program called Subscribe with Google.

Google unveiled a new feature that will appear on its search results pages that will highlight stories from publications to which a user subscribes. The component won't affect the rankings on the rest of Google's search results page, according to a company spokeswoman.

The company says it will help simplify the subscription process so consumers can easily subscribe to multiple news outlets. Following through on plans announced in October, readers will be able to use their Google login credentials as a single sign-on for their various news subscriptions, helping to prevent users from constantly hitting paywalls, particularly when switching devices.

Launch partners include the Financial Times, Gannett, the New York Times, the Telegraph, the Washington Post and Le Figaro.

Google also said it is in the early stages of testing code that will help publishers gauge the likelihood a user will subscribe, based on its data and machine-learning models in its ad-serving technology DoubleClick. By recognizing potential subscribers, Google says publishers can then present them with "the right offer at the right time."

Several months ago, the company ended a policy called "first click free" that allowed users of its search engine to bypass paywalls and access news articles free of charge. Publishers that didn't participate in the program, out of fear it hurt subscription revenue growth, had previously been punished in search results.

Google is trying to improve relations with the news industry after the two sides have clashed over tech platforms' grip on the digital ad industry, user data and news distribution, as well as what publishers perceive to be tech companies' roles in enabling the spread of misinformation.

During the event on Tuesday, representatives from publishers including the Financial Times and Washington Post touted recently developed tools from Google that have helped them increase the number of readers who become subscribers.

A tool called "flexible sampling," which allows publishers to adjust the number of free articles that visitors from Google can read, has helped the Financial Times encourage subscriptions, said Gadi Lahav, the news organization's head of product.

Some publishers greeted the news with guarded optimism, saying it signaled Google was trying to be responsive to the needs of news organizations.

"We welcome the fact that Google has been listening and is trying to make meaningful changes," said New York Times Co. Chief Executive Mark Thompson. "This is a long game, and while these steps do not, in and of themselves, transform the economics of journalism, they should be viewed as positive signs."

That doesn't mean Google has allayed all of the concerns publishers have about the company's dominance over advertising, said Jason Kint, chief executive of publishing trade group Digital Content Next.

"Every step in the right direction is a good one," Mr. Kint said. "They're walking up to the starting line, in my book."

--Lukas I. Alpert contributed to this article.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 21, 2018 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)

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