In an era of information boom and dictatorial democracies where free journalism is facing peril, Google has come to the rescue. Always dedicated to providing specific and accurate information to whoever is looking for it, the Google news initiative is set to make the transition of news from analog to digital far more seamless.
As Chief Business Officer Philipp Schindler tells us, Google is also one of the world’s biggest tech MNCs, and the business model of sustainable development is what it thrives on. Open and publicly accessible platforms such as Search and YouTube depend on producing quality content in a healthy ecosystem of intellectual, artistic, and financial freedom. Publishers are producing great digital content. Last year, Google paid its partners a hefty sum of $12.6 billion. Using the pathbreaking SEO tech, it also out clicked 10 billion clicks per month to an array of websites for free.
In order to provide technological solutions to the news industries’ most challenging problems, Google has consistently come up with innovative measures. Google has done everything from the open-source Accelerated Mobile Pages Project to simplified video distribution and cost-cutting via YouTube. It has come up with Flexible Sampling to help with the discovery of news content on Google, Google News Lab to provide virtual newsroom scenarios replete with training and editorial partnerships, and the Digital News Initiative has helped to widely renovate the European news industry.
But for Google, this is not enough. It is now set to combat fake news with its newest, GOOGLE NEWS INITIATIVE (GNI), worth $300 million, in times where news publication isn’t as rewarding as before.
In order to fight the peril of fake news and hoax springing up from random forums and chatboxes right on to its first page results, Google is about to launch the Disinfo Lab with the First Draft to fight misinformation especially during politically critical times. Meanwhile, the MNC is teaming up with the likes of the educational bigshots such as the likes of Poynter Institute, Stanford University, and the Local Media Association in order to launch MediaWise; an application is designed to pave the right path of digital literacy for the youth of today’s world.
Additionally, Google has announced a new tool, Subscribe with Google, which is set to streamline the sign-up and subscription process for premium news sources. Launch partners include the big media houses spread worldwide, such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Telegraph, and the Financial Times – which serves to show how much the possibility of fake news has rattled up the virtual space.
In his blog post, Schindler talked about the upcoming project of Google, titled News Consumer Insights. It is a dashboard tapping into the technical insight of Google Analytics and is designed to help news organizations target readers for subscriptions in a more seamless and user-friendly manner.
Google has also promised to work in conjunction with the news organizations to enhance their capacities of storytelling. To prove its point, Google cited its collaboration with the South China Morning Post, which used the Google Earth Studio in order to create a virtual reality experience for its readers.
Google has now launched a tool named Outline, which helps journalists set up a secure virtual private network (VPN) connection to the internet and provides them with anonymity and security from roving eyes, something that’s an absolute necessity for independent journalism. Thank you, Google!
