How Google supports journalism and the news industry in New Zealand

Google is committed to supporting open access to information. Our products give people choice and help them find more high-quality journalism — from international stories to community reporting — than ever before.

Over the past 20 years, we’ve collaborated closely with the news industry and provided billions of dollars globally to support the creation of quality journalism in the digital age. Through both our services and our direct funding of news organisations, Google is one of the world’s biggest financial supporters of journalism.

Our commitment to news

Our products are built to provide relevant and useful information for everyone, ensuring that people around the world are able to find quality news. As part of this, we play a constructive role in enabling a sustainable, independent, and diverse news ecosystem.

We've shown that commitment over decades of financial support by providing billions of dollars globally — sharing revenue with news publishers via our ad network, developing tools, training and funding through programs like the Google News Initiative, and launching Google News Showcase. These efforts help people get the quality news and information that matters to them and their community.

We deliver significant value and funding to news organisations

Every news organisation can choose whether they want to be in Google Search and Google News. Most do because it results in valuable free traffic.

Each month, people click through from Google Search and Google News results to publishers' websites more than 24 billion times globally. The traffic we send to news sites helps publishers increase their readership, build trust with readers and earn money. Our advertising technology helps news organisations make money by showing ads on their websites, apps and videos. Globally we pay out billions of dollars directly to the publishing partners in our ad network every year.

We also pay to licence content through Google News Showcase, which is powered by more than a billion dollars of investment into news organisations globally. Google News Showcase launched in New Zealand in 2022 and has 7 news publishers and more than 20 publications on board, including The New Zealand Herald, BusinessDesk, Radio New Zealand, Newsroom, Pacific Media Network, Scoop and Crux. Participating publishers receive a set monthly fee for curating their articles for Google News Showcase. And in some cases they receive a fee for providing access to articles behind their paywall so that readers can see the value of becoming a subscriber. Publishers of public interest journalism who are interested in participating can contact us at nz-news-partnerships@google.com.

And we’re committed to finding new ways to support the news industry. This includes Subscribe with Google, which we built with news publishers to help them make money from new subscribers, as well the Google News Initiative, through which we provide tools, training and grant funding to help news organisations evolve in the digital age. To date, the Google News Initiative has supported over 7,000 news partners in over 120 countries and territories.

News, the internet and regulation

Newspaper circulation has been falling for decades. And the internet, while providing cheaper distribution and more potential readers, completely changed the business models of news organisations, with classifieds revenue moving to specialised online classified services and increased competition from a wider range of publications. Technology companies, news organisations and governments need to collaborate to enable a strong future for journalism and quality content that doesn’t disrupt access to the open web.

The internet was built on the ability to link freely between websites, which allows people to easily browse the internet. Changing this would fundamentally break the way the open web works, and how people use Google Search.

Reflecting on our Google News Initiative work in New Zealand

New Zealand’s journalists have a strong record of independent journalism and the Google News Initiative (GNI) is supporting their efforts through digital skills and misinformation training.

One of the training programs the GNI supports is Te Rito, which aims to attract and develop more Māori and diverse voices into the news industry. This has included supporting a training camp in Tāmaki Makaurau for 30 Māori cadet journalists. The GNI also partners with media engagement platform Telum Media to train journalists on telling stories to a digital audience. Journalists are trained in areas such as visualising data and verifying information online.

To help tackle misinformation ahead of local elections, the GNI supports Policy New Zealand by continuing to iterate an online tool for journalists to understand, monitor and report misinformation. To tackle misinformation around COVID vaccines, the GNI supported Stuff’s “The Whole Truth: COVID-19 Vaccination” campaign in partnership with Māori Television and Pacific Media Network. We are also helping Squiz Kids roll out their media literacy module NewsHounds, a resource for teachers and parents to help empower young people to think critically about the media they consume.

Google News Showcase

• (NZD) $1.5 billion globally committed to support the news industry and Google News Showcase partnerships
• 1500+ news outlets globally signed onto News Showcase as of June 2022

Google News Initiative

• Through the GNI’s work, we have supported over 7,000 news partners in over 120 countries and territories with over (NZD) $440 million in global funding
• Over 450K journalists have been trained in-person, while the GNI’s free online courses have been accessed more than 2.6M times.

Revenue and traffic for publishers

• Every year, we pay out billions of dollars directly to the publishing partners in our ad network globally
• Subscribe with Google has created over 400,000 new, paid subscribers for news partners around the world
• A Deloitte study in Europe estimated the average value of a single visit to a newspaper publisher website to be between Euro 0.04 - 0.06. Using the lower figure of Euro 0.04, which is approximately (NZD) $0.07, the value provided to news websites from 628 million clicks amounts to over (NZD) $44 million.