As is well known, Google pays publishers for content in many countries. The company not only flushes customers into the publishers via Google News and the search, but you also pay directly. Last year it also launched a licensing program called Google News Showcase and works with more than 750 publications across Europe, including German media, some of whom make you wonder why Google pays for their content.
In parallel, negotiations had been held with news publishers about licensing content under the European Copyright Directive, which EU countries are currently transposing into national law. So far, according to Google, it has reached agreements with more than 300 national, local and specialist news publishers in Germany, Hungary, France, Austria, the Netherlands and Ireland, and many more discussions are still ongoing.
Google has now announced the launch of a new tool that will allow news publishers to submit offers for content, initially in Germany and Hungary, and then in other EU countries in the coming months. With the new Extended News Previews tool, which will be available through Search Console, publishers will be offered an Extended News Preview (ENP) agreement with Google for this content.
Extended News Previews (ENP) is an initiative by Google in response to the requirements of Article 15 of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market, which came into force in 2019. According to this directive, online platforms must in certain cases obtain the consent of the publisher or web publisher if they want to use certain content of press publications. The use of links and very short excerpts from press releases does not require consent. Google then pays a license fee to display enhanced preview content, such as snippets and thumbnails, that may fall under this Article 15 policy.
The short form: Google licenses content and now pays European publishers for longer texts that appear somewhere. So far, however, this has only been the case for a few news organizations.