The rise of social media, mobile devices, notifications, apps and news sites around the world means people have more ways to get news than ever before. Google News gives people a simple way to cut through the noise and easily find out what’s important in their local community and around the world. From local and regional news outlets to national and global perspectives, Google News brings together diverse journalism to help us better understand our world.

Our vision for Google News is focused on strengthening access to local news, providing access to a diverse range of sources, and addressing misinformation while protecting the open web.

Today we're announcing a number of ways we're working to help people around the world find a broad array of authoritative news, through global support to news organizations and product innovation.

The new Google News

Google News is available in over 125 countries and 40 languages. Each month, people click through from Google Search and Google News results to publishers’ websites more than 24 billion times. Google’s algorithms use machine learning to analyze hundreds of different factors to identify and organize the stories being covered around the world.

To help people dive deeper into important stories and more easily find local news from around the world, today we’re launching a redesigned, more customizable Google News experience for desktop.

Our new look for Google News on desktop was inspired by feedback we received from readers. We’ve made it easier for you to catch up on the most important news by bringing Top stories, Local news and personalized picks for you to the top of the page.

As an example, we’ve moved our local news section to the top of the page, so it’s easier to find. You can now use the filter button to add multiple locations to your local news section, so you’ll never miss important news about the cities and towns you care about. This change is just the latest way we’re bringing local news to users around the world. Last year, we expanded a feature on Google Search so readers around the world can now see a carousel of local news stories when Google finds local news coverage relevant to their query. This helps them easily find stories from local news publishers.

To make sure this Google News desktop homepage feels truly yours, you now have the ability to customize the topics that appear. This new feature makes it simple to scroll and click through to the stories that most interest you. You can add, remove or reorder topics – just click the blue customize button in the top right of the Your Topics section to get started.

To help you make more informed judgments about the information you come across online, we’ve expanded our Fact Check section in Google News on desktop to provide more context. In addition to headlines, you’ll now see the original claim made along with the fact-checked assessment from independent organizations.

This is one of the many ways Google is helping support media literacy. You can also find more information about sources right on Google Search, called About This Result. Next to related Search results, you’ll see three dots that you can tap to learn more about the result and where the information is coming from. With this extra context, you can follow expert recommendations to check the source and see what others say about a topic, helping you make more informed decisions about the sites you may want to visit and what results will be most useful for you.

As part of our announcements today to bring a redesigned Google News to people globally, we’re also announcing that after an eight-year hiatus, Google News is returning to Spain. This is a result of a new copyright law and we hope that the return of Google News to Spain helps more people find more news, from more places, and helps publishers find new readers

How we’re helping journalists

Having access to news goes beyond individuals’ experiences day to day – it's also about finding ways to help the news industry stay successful. Through the Google News Initiative, we partner with news publishers around the world to build a long-lasting, diverse and innovative news industry. We do this by offering training, programs, funding and products to journalists and newsrooms to help strengthen their work in the digital age.

One of the GNI’s goals is to elevate the work of diverse publications around the world. As part of that effort, we’re officially opening the applications for our Global News Equity Fund, our multi-million dollar commitment to help bring more diversity and equity to the news industry. Independent journalists and small and medium-sized news organizations producing original news for minority and underrepresented audiences are eligible to apply by July 21 for funding to support and expand their news operations.

We’re also announcing the first round of recipients of The Data-Driven Reporting Project, a partnership between the GNI and the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. The first round of funding awards around $1 million to help journalists serving local and underrepresented communities, supporting their work to publish document-based or data driven investigative stories. The 22 winners are from the U.S. and Canada. Medill will provide specialized training, expertise and resources to award recipients. Google played no role in the selection of jurors or individual projects. Applications for a second round will open later this year.

As another part of our continued commitment to supporting local news in the U.S., we’ll invest in a local news advertising campaign placed with local outlets. We’ll also continue to partner with local news associations to offer programs that will support long-term digital transformation and sustainability.

20 years of Google News

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Google News. When it launched, Google News broke new ground in news aggregation by gathering links in real time, grouping articles by story and ranking stories from publishers worldwide.

The world has changed a lot in the past 20 years – and the way people learn and seek information, and how news organizations cover the news, have changed with it. At Google, we’re committed to work with publishers, governments and civil society to build a future of news that meets the new ways people look for and consume news.

Here’s to the next 20 years.

A little over a year ago we announced Google News Showcase, our new product experience and licensing program for news, to readers and publishers all around the world. Our goal is to help publishers more deeply engage with their readers and to help readers find, follow and support the news organizations covering the issues that matter to them. One year in, we continue to learn, update and expand the product, and we’ve seen strong, steady numbers both in terms of the number of publishers signing on for the product and how readers are interacting with the content.

Since News Showcase launched in October 2020, we’ve signed deals with more than 1,000 news publications around the world and have launched in more than a dozen countries: India, Japan, Germany, Brazil, Austria, the U.K., Australia, Czechia, Italy, Colombia, Argentina, and just a few weeks ago we launched in Canada and Ireland. More than 90% of the publications that are part of News Showcase represent local or community news. Local news is an essential way for readers to connect to their communities and ensure they get the news that impacts their day-to-day lives.

We know how hard it can be to keep on top of the news. With News Showcase, readers see what stories key publications think are worth highlighting and get more insight directly from those publishers through curated panels. We give publishers a variety of News Showcase panel templates to use so they can give additional context to stories, add related articles, timelines and more. The panels give news publishers more direct control of their presentation and branding, helping them be more visible to their dedicated readers and to those who are just discovering them.

News Showcase panels can appear across Google, currently on News and Discover, and direct readers to the full articles on publishers’ websites, helping them deepen their relationships with readers. In addition to the revenue that comes directly from these more-engaged readers, participating publishers will receive monthly licensing payments from Google.

“As a regional publisher in south and east Germany, a key objective for us is to expand our digital presence and reach to audiences,” says Daniel Torka, member of the executive board of NPG (Südwest Presse), a daily regional newspaper. “Using News Showcase has allowed us to more deeply engage our readers on important stories and give us more opportunities to tell stories differently.”

"I always work to increase the number of our users, to reach a wider audience,” says Clara Inés Araújo, editor in chief of El Pilón, a regional newspaper in Colombia. “For this, Google News Showcase has been a strategic ally. With nice designs, readers feel closer to our stories. We provide them with organized information about what is happening in our region and the country. The future is about working together, and Google News Showcase is a great example."

"Local newspapers create essential reporting for their communities,” says Kobe Shimbun, a local newspaper in Japan that covers Hyogo Prefecture. “However, in the digital era, we need to build more touch points for us to be discovered by those readers. Google News Showcase provides us a new way for readers to find the articles they need, and enables us to strengthen our relationships with them."

“Le Devoir is a proud partner of Google News Showcase. Google’s assistance and tools are critical in Le Devoir’s strategy to build a digital audience,” says Brian Myles, editor of Le Devoir, a Quebec-based independent news publisher. “We rely mainly on digital subscriptions and our business model is sustainable. In this regard, Google News Showcase fits perfectly with our current efforts to build a larger community of readers. This partnership will bring us a step forward in our digital transformation, while delivering our trusted and fact-based brand of independent journalism to a wider audience.”

One year in, we’re seeing robust numbers from News Showcase that indicate both publishers and readers are getting value from the quality curated content found in the product.

To start, participating publishers have created over one million News Showcase panels to date. And readers clearly like what they see. People have tapped the Follow button on News Showcase panels over 1.5 million times, showing they’re looking for more content from their favorite publishers or ones they have just discovered. By following a news organization on News Showcase, readers are ensuring that they get to see regular updates from these publishers every time they open Google News.

To further strengthen these relationships, we offer News Showcase readers the ability to read expanded access to select content from publishers. This feature means readers will have the opportunity to read more of a publisher’s articles, encouraging them to learn more about the publication — and potentially subscribe. Combined together, these features and numbers show that the product is supporting news organizations’ mission of reaching readers and helping to bring a deeper engagement.

We’re continuing to work with news organizations to learn more about how people engage with News Showcase to ensure we’re delivering on our long-term goal of strengthening the relationship between readers and publishers.

News Showcase is just one of our investments in our ongoing commitment to support journalism around the world. Through both our services and direct funding of news organizations, Google is one of the world’s biggest financial supporters of news. With the Google News Initiative, we offer training in digital skills and capabilities, programs like GNI Startups Lab and the GNI Digital Growth Program to accelerate small and mid-sized news organizations’ business growth, and products like News Consumer Insights and Subscribe with Google to help publishers understand their audiences and grow reader revenue. Since we launched the GNI in 2018, we’ve worked with more than 7,000 news partners in over 120 countries and territories and trained more than 450,000 journalists in 70 countries. More details on our GNI work over the past three years is available in our impact report.

Alongside governments, other companies and civic society, we’re dedicated to continuing to find ways to engage readers with journalism that matters to them and supporting the sustainability of the news industry around the world.

Today we are publishing a paper that draws from our decades-long experience working with news publishers and journalists. It offers some ideas for constructive paths forward to foster the sustainability of the quality journalism that informs and strengthens communities, and elevates the essential stories in our lives. This paper includes possible areas for public policy support, such as incentive structures, innovation programs and projects to share best practices. While this is by no means an exhaustive list of ideas, we are publishing it to contribute to the wider discussion.

Supporting journalism has always been important to Google. As a company whose mission focuses on access to information, and whose success depends in large part on having a diverse open ecosystem of quality information, we are committed to helping find a path to a sustainable future for journalism. It's why 20 years ago, we built Google News to help connect people to stories that impact their daily lives. We launched the Google News Initiative to support news publishers in their transition to a digital world; we do this through tools, technology and significant financial support for both existing newsrooms and new, diverse online news outlets and projects. More recently, we launched Google News Showcase, through which we pay publishers to create and curate quality content for a new online news experience. 

Quality journalism enables communities to learn and share essential information, establish shared, accurate understandings of key public developments, and hold elected officials and institutions to account. And in this information age it has never been more essential for democratic discourse and social well-being. But digitization has challenged the underlying commercial model. That said, ensuring a sustainable, vibrant future for quality journalism needs to be done thoughtfully, and as a collective endeavor. 

Sensible public policy can be a key component to addressing these challenges; such policy will work best if it is informed by a robust dialogue among a diverse range of stakeholders including publishers, journalists, policymakers, civil society and the private sector. We must identify the underlying challenges and consider novel solutions. 

In the paper we are publishing today, we discuss three foundational proposals that we believe could help inform public policy approaches to supporting the future of quality journalism:

1. Convening cross-sector experts to identify focus areas and collaborate on shared solutions;
2. Investing in newsroom innovation and experimentation to identify and support sustainable business models; and 
3. Providing support for legacy institutions as they go through the digital transformation. 

There are no easy solutions to the complex set of challenges facing the news industry today, which is why we have been working for years to support legacy newsrooms and new entrants focused on providing local news and quality journalism.  The challenge is urgent – and across society we must work together to create sustainable solutions to these issues.

The experiences and lessons we describe in this paper would not have been possible without the valuable input we’ve received from the news partners we have worked with and learned from over the years. While there may be no simple solution, we are eager to listen, learn more and help drive innovation to support a successful public policy approach that results in a vibrant journalism ecosystem.

The events of this past year have proven that providing access to diverse, high-quality news sources is more important than ever. Whether it’s information about COVID-19, the latest environmental story or reporting on governments around the world, people are looking for the news that affects their lives. 

Our investment of $1 billion over the next three years towards news partnerships and for Google News Showcase helps support publications to produce, distribute and explain essential information to users in new ways. News Showcase panels give publishers the ability to tell important news stories together with context and links to additional stories. Panels also feature recognizable branding so users can easily find and identify trusted news organizations. 

Since we announced Google News Showcase last year, we’ve signed agreements with nearly 450 publications across a dozen countries, the majority of which are local and regional. Our news partners include Le Monde, Le Figaro, and Libération in France, El Cronista and La Gaceta in Argentina, TAG24 and Sächsische Zeitung in Germany, and Jornal do Commercio, a regional newspaper from Pernambuco in Brazil. 

Today we’re announcing a new global deal with Reuters for News Showcase. Their in-depth coverage from 2,500 journalists around the world is indispensable and another example of the quality news content News Showcase is bringing to users.

These new partners are in addition to the existing News Showcase publications that are live in Brazil and Germany, and have already created tens of thousands of panels which have been seen by millions of users across Google News and Discover on Android and iOS.

Local news organizations have always been critical in keeping people informed, and that is more true now than ever before amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. With News Showcase, we want to ensure that local news publishers play a strong role in our product. These outlets, with their deep coverage of local events, schools, crime and government, are a cornerstone of well-informed and functioning communities. Ensuring users around the world have access to high-quality local news is of tremendous importance, and it’s one of the areas where we’re heavily investing for 2021.

While access to quality content is essential, so too is ensuring that the news industry can develop sustainable business models. That’s why we’re working closely with a number of News Showcase partners to pay to provide users free access to select paywalled stories. This feature will give users the opportunity to get to know content they might not otherwise have access to. In addition, it will enable publishers to develop their own relationships with users and incentivize them to become a subscriber. 

We’ve worked directly with our news partners to get feedback on this feature so that it integrates easily into their paywalls, ensuring that it works for both them and their users. "Working with Google has been great for our entire team, from the newsroom to our development team, and we believe that we will see exciting results with the new ability to show our users additional access to paywalled content,” says Cândido Henrique Silva, executive editor of O TEMPO, a national news outlet in Brazil. 

The extended access feature will be live in the News Showcase product in the next couple of months.

2021 will be a year of major investment in News Showcase as we expand to other markets and build more features, creating a great news experience for users around the globe. We are committed to doing this alongside news publishers as we play our part in developing a better future for quality journalism.

In late June, we launched a licensing program to pay for quality content from publishers for an upcoming news experience. The goal of this project is to create something that gives readers more context and journalistic perspective on news stories as well as helps publishers’ distinct editorial voices shine through. Today, we wanted to update you on how we're working alongside our publisher partners to achieve this.

This licensing program and upcoming product both build on our broader commitment to support the news industry in its drive towards a more sustainable future. And as we expand licensing to more publishers in more countries, we’re also working closely with 10 different news outlets from Germany and Brazil on an early access program,  testing features and gathering feedback to shape the product direction ahead of full launch later this year. Publishers taking part in this early access program including international brands as well as local household staples like ZEIT ONLINE, Der Spiegel, Tagesspiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Ippen Media Group and Rheinische Post in Germany and Estado de Minas,  A Gazeta, Correio Braziliense and UOL in Brazil. These partners are helping us test features and gather feedback ahead of a full launch later this year. 

At Google, we know the best products are built when a diversity of knowledge, insight and expertise are brought into the mix, and this early access program is a major phase in our progress. Participating publishers are testing publisher tools, evaluating technical integrations and ensuring different templates enhance the ways they bring stories to their readers.  We’re also discussing paywall integrations, where Google would pay for free access to allow readers to read articles on a publisher’s site. This will help paywalled publishers grow their audience and deepen their relationship with readers.

But the success of this product will rest on how good the experience is for readers, so bringing in experts from the news industry to understand their insights and hear their feedback is critical. That’s particularly appealing for Sebastian Horn, Deputy Editor of ZEIT ONLINE, one of Germany’s leading publishers and one of our partners. "Collaborating with Google on this new project allows us to bring the best of ZEIT ONLINE’s journalism to new audiences across Google's products and to do what our readers trust us to do best–provide them with the most relevant news and the best in-depth analysis on current topics.“ 

We also want to make sure readers know who is behind the news and find publications they respect. That’s why we’re making sure this  product strongly reflects the publishers’ brand, while still creating a cohesive news experience. 

“This new collaboration opportunity adds further value to the essence of our mission, which is to forge a very close bond with our community through quality journalism and a first rate product experience,” says Aglisson Lopes, the Performance Editor forA Gazeta, one of Brazil's leading local and regional publications. “We are a regional publisher that strives to be at the leading edge of digital trends and our continuing work with Google leads the way in getting us closer to this goal."

Google has long been invested in supporting news businesses and we believe the work we do through the Google News Initiative alongside the traffic from News and Search–24 billion visits a month–are hugely valuable. Our licensing program also plays a major role, and we will be announcing new partners in additional countries in the coming weeks. 

As we get closer to a public launch, we’re especially grateful to these initial partners for working together to build a product that enables people to become more informed and provides additional financial support for news publishers.