NEW DELHI: Media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has struck a landmark three-year global news deal with Alphabet Inc's Google, essentially agreeing to sell its new products for the search engine giant's curated news platform.
The companies will develop a subscription platform, share advertising revenue through Google's ad technology services, build out audio journalism and develop video journalism by YouTube. The deal comes after years of public feuding between Murdoch and Google, most recently in Australia, where Google has threatened to shut down its search engine to avoid "unworkable" content laws.
This extensive deal involving "significant payments" from Google is the culmination of a long feud between the Murdochs-owned News Corp and the tech colossus seeking compensation for premium content from platforms. Murdoch previously secured payments from Apple and Facebook for their Apple News and Facebook News products.
News Corp publications joining Google News Showcase include US publications The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, MarketWatch, and the New York Post; UK publications The Times and The Sunday Times, and The Sun; and Australian publications including The Australian, news.com.au and Sky News.
News Corp CEO Robert Thompson 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."
In Australia, the country's two largest free-to-air television broadcasters have struck deals with Google collectively worth $47 million a year, according to media reports.
The Australian deals come days before the government plans to pass laws that would allow it to appoint an arbitrator to set Google's content fees if it cannot strike a deal privately, a factor that government and media figures held up as a turning point for negotiations which stalled a year earlier.
Microsoft Corp, a big beneficiary of Google leaving the Australian market, has publicly endorsed the proposed Australian law and recently urged the US government to copy it.
The company's deal with Google also comes after the tech giant agreed to pay $76 million over three years to a group of 121 French news publishers to end a more than year-long copyright spat.
Google has also moved to secure deals with major publishers in the UK, Germany, Brazil and Argentina.
The impact of News Corp's deal with Google on the news publishing environment remains a big question.
