How Google supports journalism and the news industry in the UK

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 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 of financial support — sharing revenue with news publishers via our ad network, developing tools, training and funding through programmes like the Google News Initiative, and launching Google News Showcase. All of these have led to us transferring significant value to news organisations.

These efforts help people get the quality news and information that matters to them and their community and ensure a sustainable future for quality journalism. 

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.

Every month, people in Europe click through from Google Search and Google News results to publishers' websites 8 billion times. The traffic we send to news sites helps publishers increase their readership, build trust with readers and earn money. In fact, the overall value of web traffic is estimated to be worth more than £500 million a year to news publishers in the UK.

Our advertising technology helps news organisations make money by showing ads on their websites, apps and videos. In the UK, between 2018-2020, we paid out more than $328M to the top five news publishers in our ad network. When news publishers use Ad Manager, they keep between 70-95+% of digital advertising revenue.

We also pay to license content through Google News Showcase, an online experience that’s powered by a $1 billion investment in news organisations. More than 280 UK publications have brought their journalism to Google News Showcase since we launched in 2021, 90%+ of which are local newspapers, from the Daily Mail and Guardian to the Grantham Journal and the North Devon Gazette.

And we’re committed to finding new ways to support the news industry. This includes Reader Revenue Manager, 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 evolve in the digital age. The Google News Initiative (GNI) includes a $300 million funding commitment to the future of the news industry. In the UK, from 2018-2020, we’ve provided $18M to support UK news organisations.

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. This is why we and many others are concerned by some proposals that would require news publishers to be paid just for showing links to their sites from a Google search results page.

Google News Showcase

• $1 billion committed to support the news industry and Google News Showcase partnerships
• 285 UK news outlets signed onto News Showcase as of February 2021, 90%+ of which are local newspapers

Google News Initiative

• Since the GNI launched in the UK, we have committed $18M to support news organisations
• We provide publishers a variety of business programmes and resources, with more than 380 publishers attending one of our recent training sessions.

Revenue and traffic for publishers

• Globally, every year, we pay out billions of dollars directly to the publishing partners in our ad network
• In the UK, between 2018-2020, we paid out more than $328M to the top five news publishers in the ad network. When news publishers use Ad Manager, they keep between 70-95+% of digital advertising revenue.
• Google sends 8 billion clicks per month from Google Search and Google News results to European publishers’ websites — estimated by Deloitte to have a value of between 4-6 Euro cents (3-5 pence) per click. This represents the total value of web traffic to be more than £500M to UK publishers.