News Corp., the parent company of the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, said it has reached a three-year agreement to provide content from its news sites around the globe to Google in exchange for “significant payments” from the search giant.
The deal appears to resolve a long-simmering standoff between News Corp. and Google that has spilled across multiple continents and spurred government efforts worldwide to curb Google’s growing dominance over online advertising, most prominently in Australia.
In addition to the Wall Street Journal and The Post, among the News Corp. publications participating in “Google News Showcase” in the US will be Barron’s and MarketWatch, the company said Wednesday. In the UK, the Times, the Sunday Times of London and the Sun will participate, and in Australia, it will include a range of news platforms including The Australian, news.com.au, Sky News and multiple local titles.
Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but News Corp. said the deal involves the development of a subscription platform, the sharing of ad revenue via Google’s ad technology services, the cultivation of audio journalism and meaningful investments in innovative video journalism by YouTube.
Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp., said the deal would have “a positive impact on journalism around the globe as we have firmly established that there should be a premium for premium journalism.”
“I would like to thank Sundar Pichai and his team at Google who have shown a thoughtful commitment to journalism that will resonate in every country,” Thomson said. “This has been a passionate cause for our company for well over a decade and I am gratified that the terms of trade are changing, not just for News Corp., but for every publisher.”
News Corp. shares were recently off 1.6 percent at $23.42. Shares of Google parent Alphabet dipped 0.5 percent to $2,101.03.
The deal comes as pressure has been mounting on social-media giants Facebook and Google to share revenue with the media companies that produce content that appear on the tech giants’ platforms and which help them generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue. Last week, Microsoft weighed in, throwing its weight behind the publishers.
Google said last year that it plans to distribute $1 billion to media companies over the next three years.
Media companies worldwide are watching as Australia is on the brink of passing a law that would allow companies to join forces and negotiate directly with the tech titans for payment. The bill passed from committee to the full legislature on Tuesday and is expected to be passed into law. Google has chafed at the government proposal and has threatened to deny search engine access in Australia if the bill becomes law.
In the UK, Google last week said it has a three-year agreement involving about 120 publications there including Reuters and the Financial Times.
Despite the objections from Google, the Australian code is already being seen as a model for countries in the rest of the world.
In the United States, the News Media Alliance, an industry group that includes News Corp., said it expects to reintroduce the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act into the current congressional session that would allow media companies to overcome antitrust hurdles and negotiate collectively with the tech giants.
“We are expecting reintroduction of our Safe Harbor bill soon — and we are very optimistic about the prospects for that bill in this Congress,” David Chavern, CEO of the New Media Alliance, told The Post. “In light of events in Australia and Europe, we have had members of Congress ask about how we might expand the Safe Harbor to incorporate provisions about negotiating structure and dispute resolution. We are looking at a whole range of options.”