Google has announced that its latest news service, Google News Showcase, will begin distribution to local, national and independent publishers in the UK and Australia. The service will give readers the ability to access the latest news alongside select pay-per-view content from publishers including The Financial Times, Evening Standard, The Independent, The Telegraph and Reuters in the UK, and The Canberra Times, The Saturday Paper , Crikey, The New Daily and The Conversation in Australia, among others. The Google News Showcase aims to give readers the ability to read more of a publisher's content than they would otherwise have access to, while allowing publishers to encourage readers to become subscribers, just like Apple does. News works. The Google News Showcase is made up of slide-out cards called "story panels" that can include timelines, bullet points, and article lists, with plans to add video and audio content in the future. Each panel features the relevant publisher's branding in the top left corner and a selection of curated digital stories, which redirect the reader to publication pages when selected. The service is now available in the Google News app for Android, iOS and the mobile web, as well as Discover on iOS.
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The Google News Showcase will also provide a platform for local newspapers that do not have the resources of many major national newspapers to invest in their digital transformation. Speaking about the importance of Google's captive audience capabilities, David Higgerson, Audience Director at Reach, the UK's largest trade publisher, said: "We welcome this initiative and its potential to bring public interest journalism a more visible platform on Google.For us, public interest journalism thrives when it's not just about recording events, but has a genuine interest to the public and is able to "attract an audience, which means it's sustainable Higgerson added: "Google's work here will help give readers a new way to discover news that is important to them, that they might not otherwise have discovered." Globally, there are now more than 450 news publications. on Google News Showcase in more than a dozen countries, including Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and Argentina, with ongoing discussions to offer the service in several other countries.Amid the global Covid-19 crisis, never it has been more important to stay informed at the national and local levels. Google's latest news service aims to make sorting out fake news a bit easier.