If you’re a Google News user, you may be able to access paywalled articles from major news sites. According to Google, the News Showcase feature will now start offering people access to paywalled content in partnership with select news publishers.
Google says users in supported countries can access curated lists of important articles of the day in their For You feeds and a newly dedicated area within the Newsstand on Google News.
If a user follows a news outlet that covers their local news, they’ll see daily updates on the most important local stories, selected by that newsroom. Relevant publications, both national and local, will also now be shown within the For You feed, plus in a dedicated area to discover new News Showcase publications within Newsstand.
To access paywalled articles, users must register with individual publishers.
In addition to expanding to Google News on iOS, News Showcase will be coming to news.google.com and Google Discover. With News Showcase, participating publishers agree to make snippets of their articles available through Google News. Publishers can manage branded story panels and customize them with timelines, bullets, related news articles, etc.
Launched in October, News Showcase has signed partnerships with nearly 200 publications across Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Canada the UK and Australia, including such names as Der Spiegel, Stern, Die Zeit, Folha de S.Paulo, Band and Infobae. Regionally and locally significant publications are also part of this Google initiative.
Google’s has set aside a $1 billion fund to pay publishers for content during the project’s first three years. Publishers get compensated for providing blurbs to Google News and giving readers free access to certain paywalled articles. For the intricacies of this deal between Google and publishers, years in the making, read an excellent overview by Frederic Filloux over at Monday Note, titled “Inside Google’s Deal with the French Media”.