In 2022, Luiz was thrilled to be taught that his native newspaper in Brazil could be the recipient of a contract with one of many world’s strongest corporations.
Like in different nations across the globe, many small Brazilian information shops had been scraping funds collectively to make ends meet. The provide of cash from an organization equivalent to Google appeared like a miracle.
“I stored pondering, why they had been providing me this? I mentioned, is that this all there may be to it?” mentioned the writer, utilizing a Brazilian saying: “Too beneficiant a present makes the saint suspicious.”
“To be frank, I can not learn English, so I signed the contract and didn’t learn all the small print,” he mentioned. “It’s about 40% of our income … Every month. And each first day of the month, it’s deposited in our account. How great. It’s religiously deposited.” The outlet’s different sources of income are adverts, donations and authorities cash.
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Luiz, whose title has been modified due to dangers to funding for sharing the small print of his contract, is certainly one of not less than 450 publishers throughout Latin America, and greater than 2,000 across the globe, who’ve signed such a cope with Google’s News Showcase licensing program up to now 5 years.
Google, by the Showcase program, has dedicated to spending a billion US {dollars} on information globally. In the method, critics argue, it has bred monetary dependence, compelled shops to desert copyright claims, and probably shielded itself from future authorized claims for utilizing journalism in its AI fashions. This world investigation, Big Tech’s Invisible Hand, sheds new mild on a few of these complexities. The investigation was led by Agência Pública and Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística (CLIP), in collaboration with 15 organisations, together with Crikey, working in 13 nations.
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When requested about Showcase and its potential use in AI fashions, Google despatched a written assertion: “Like many corporations, we repeatedly have interaction with policymakers and others on a variety of points, together with about how insurance policies might have an effect on individuals who use our merchandise. We transparently report our interactions with officers in accordance with native laws.”
In 2019, the European Union voted to cross a copyright directive that modified how the world would regulate know-how and digital information for years to come back. The vote set off a regulatory chain response that Google has been pushing again on ever since.
After the vote, Google’s head workplace took the lesson that the information business would use “all their lobbying energy to get cash from us,” Madhav Chinnappa, a former government at Google News, mentioned in an interview for this investigation. Google News Showcase was an try by the corporate “to guard ourselves and see how we deal with this in probably the most pragmatic approach,” he mentioned.
So, with a promise to spend US$1 billion on information throughout the globe, this system was launched on October 1, 2020.
“I assumed Google News Showcase wouldn’t resolve the issues it was created to handle — I assumed it will make issues worse,” Chinnappa mentioned.
Chinnappa helped create Google’s Digital News Initiative (DNI), a program throughout the firm aimed toward selling innovation within the European information business by grants and tasks. It was later expanded globally and have become the Google News Initiative, or GNI.
Unlike the GNI funding program, which provided help within the type of grants or coaching periods, Showcase included a licensing deal, which means the corporate would personal some rights to make use of the content material produced by the information shops it had partnered with. Google weblog posts recommend it was designed particularly as a approach for Google to compensate shops and keep away from laws like Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code and France’s digital copyright legal guidelines.
By the launch, 200 shops had signed onto Google News Showcase in nations like Australia, Argentina and Brazil — the place media bargaining codes had been actively being mentioned.
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The program included a featured spot in a specialised “Showcase” web page throughout the Google News platform. But many publishers informed this investigation they’ve gained little to no site visitors from the product.
Google Showcase marked a departure from the GNI and associated packages, which had been an strategy aimed toward investing in information innovation, to an try to handle regulatory strain, mentioned Ludovic Blecher, former head of GNI Innovation division. “To shield its enterprise — and its margin — sooner or later, I felt that the precedence grew to become to mitigate the regulatory dangers and to maintain the quantity to pay to publishers ‘inexpensive.’ So the dialogue pivoted extra in direction of the massive and most influential gamers. I name it ‘renting your enemies’.”
On the opposite hand, the media was unable to reap the benefits of the chance, he mentioned. “With a extra united strategy, much less ego and a greater understanding of how Google works, the information ecosystem might have achieved a greater job to defend and shield the way forward for journalism — which is extra wanted than ever,” he mentioned.
One Brazilian information affiliation government mentioned: “Google’s packages for journalism had been all the time a PR technique.” But, he mentioned, “once they acquired extra regulatory strain, the PR technique modified. Showcase is one of the best instance. It is a method that builds monetary dependency.”
Showcase contract values proven to our reporting staff vary from US$25,000 yearly to US$250,000 per 12 months, with the most important offers going to the most important shops. The contracts won’t be printed as requested by our sources.
A small writer mentioned Google News Showcase represents 15% of its income and is the corporate’s largest distinctive supply of earnings. “So, 15% is tremendous related. It’s a lifesaver,” he mentioned.
Showcase has turn out to be important for a lot of publications. Across Latin America, a examine discovered publications in want of funds have turn out to be more and more reliant on this system, though many newsroom leaders say the funding is insufficient and doesn’t ship on the promise to drive site visitors to their websites.
“[Newsroom leaders] informed us the viewers [from Showcase] was insignificant,” mentioned Juliana Colussi, professor on the Universidad Rey da España, and one of many examine’s authors. “Large information shops can nonetheless survive with subscriptions. But smaller, native media can’t get as many subscriptions. So as a consequence there’s a dependency [on Google Showcase].”
An Australian media government mentioned cash from Google Showcase contracts made up about 5% of their firm’s annual finances.
“If we misplaced it, it will harm us — we must increase that cash elsewhere, and we would lose just a few employees members, however it’s not mission essential to our enterprise,” the manager mentioned.
Secrecy as a method
But the offers embrace extra than simply funding — and the threats to take it away. Showcase contracts additionally intention to make sure secrecy.
Contracts proven to our reporters embrace clauses that neither Google or the writer “might make any public assertion concerning this settlement with out the opposite’s prior written approval.” While each events can disclose that the deal exists, neither is allowed to share the contract worth or phrases, even after the contract is terminated.
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Carla Egydio, a lobbyist for the Brazilian Digital Journalism Association (Ajor), mentioned Showcase is a strategic program. “In an financial sector already combating monetary sustainability, it’s very troublesome for an organisation that is determined by this income — as many in Brazil do — to help laws with out understanding whether or not it should convey them kind of income [than Showcase deals] if it passes,” she mentioned.
Many publishers contacted for this investigation had been cautious of speaking concerning the offers, fearing it will imply breaking the secrecy clause.
Nelson Yap, chairman of the Public Interest Publishers Alliance (PIPA), a coalition of 24 Australian publishers, mentioned he believes that requiring non-disclosure agreements is a method to inhibit collaboration between publishers.
“It prevents the publishers from studying from one another. It makes it troublesome to collaborate whenever you’re sure by non-disclosure agreements so you possibly can solely speak [at a] very floor stage,” he mentioned. “They know this and so they undertake this as a method globally.”
Canada launched its Online News Act on April 5, 2022. Showcase had launched within the nation six months earlier, on October 27, 2021.
Witnesses who argued for Canada’s invoice in the course of the legislative progress argued the regulation might provide extra transparency in the course of the deal making course of in comparison with letting Google strike offers independently.
The hope was that legislating the funds between the platforms and media shops would shed some mild on how the offers occurred and assist all shops negotiate higher contracts.
But when the act lastly handed in June 2023, forcing Google and Meta to pay for the information on their platforms, Google ended its Showcase contracts within the nation.
The transfer meant a big loss for the 11 publishers who had signed offers, together with a few of the nation’s largest shops like The Globe and Mail, The Winnipeg Free Press and Torstar.
Investigation in Germany
In Germany, Oliver Schmidt, head of content material technique at information licensing firm Corint Media, mentioned shops had been involved Showcase signatories could be favoured by the corporate’s algorithms.
The phrases of the offers led Germany’s federal competitors regulator, Bundeskartellamt, to launch a continuing in opposition to Google in 2021 over considerations that the agency’s plans to combine its News Showcase service into basic searches would “squeeze out” comparable providers provided by different suppliers from the market.
“Google has responded to our considerations and applied necessary changes to the advantage of publishers … it should proceed to be irrelevant for the rating of the search outcomes whether or not or not a writer participates in Showcase,” Bundeskartellamt president Andreas Mundt mentioned after the proceedings had been discontinued in 2022.
Google additionally modified the best way it wrote contracts as a response to the continuing, ensuring “publishers won’t face difficulties in asserting their basic ancillary copyright,” Mundt added.
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Google was pressured to take away clauses stating that the site visitors from Google search “is enough remuneration for Google’s indexation, show, and different comparable makes use of of content material from writer’s publications in reference to Google’s automated referencing providers”.
Even although the clauses had been scrapped in Germany, they nonetheless seem in contracts with shops in different nations, our investigation discovered.
Other clauses within the contracts state Google might terminate the deal if a regulation was handed to ascertain fee from the platforms, or if the writer participates in or initiates a authorized declare or criticism in opposition to Google.
Corint Media’s Schmidt, whose group represents a few third of the media in Germany, mentioned these termination clauses had been “damaging.”
“When you’re Google, having like 90% of the market, you’re a dominant participant out there, and publishers must depend on your platform to get clicks, to get site visitors … And then you have got agreements like Google News Showcase that don’t assist you to take your rights and to monetise your rights,” he mentioned.
“We noticed that Google News Showcase is a instrument for Google to separate the market.”
New Showcase contracts are being negotiated on a regular basis, too.
In Indonesia, the offers are being struck as half of that nation’s bargaining code. Industry gamers in that nation had already signed such offers in 2021, three years earlier than Indonesia’s writer rights laws was formally ratified. Google had negotiated to present solely part of the general deal to those media corporations till it was glad with the laws being debated in Indonesia. A authorities official confirmed this system didn’t begin totally. After the regulation handed in 2024, Google continued signing Showcase offers, together with with smaller publishers.
Australia’s new deal
In 2022, to keep away from being “designated” and face arbitration beneath the Morrison authorities’s News Media Bargaining Code, Google had negotiated offers with dozens of publishers within the nation. But when a few of these contracts had been cancelled earlier this 12 months, it’s understood media executives in Australia had been blindsided.
Twenty-four of these publishers, which had been related to the Public Interest Publishers Alliance, had negotiated five-year contracts, which had been renewable yearly. Despite this, in June these offers had been out of the blue terminated after simply three years.
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Australia, among the many first nations to cross bargaining laws, was additionally one of many first the place Google News Showcase was launched.
Now, 5 years later, the nation is growing an up to date model of the News Media Bargaining Code, generally known as the News Bargaining Incentive, which can — amongst different modifications — forestall platforms from opting out of paying by blocking information content material as Meta had achieved in Canada in response to the nation’s bargaining regulation.
But high of thoughts for Australian publishers is how the brand new coverage will deal with AI.
Could AI coaching be embedded in Showcase?
As corporations race to develop probably the most clever machines, they want huge portions of factual, up-to-date data. News shops have it.
While in bargaining code negotiations, Google and Meta each argued the information had little or no worth for the businesses due to the dearth of promoting income they make from information queries. The rise of AI is altering that.
News content material is usually used to coach AI fashions and chatbots, which then incorporate the data into the responses they supply to customers. These instruments don’t all the time present the supply of the data of their responses.
“There’s completely no denying that information content material is efficacious to AI corporations,” mentioned Klaudia Jaźwińska, a researcher and journalist who leads the Tow Center’s Platforms and Publishers undertaking at Columbia University.
She pointed to a examine by MuckRack printed in July which discovered information content material confirmed up in almost half of all AI chatbot responses if person queries handled current occasions. Google’s AI overviews, that are displayed in a number of nations the place AI use isn’t but regulated, all the time hyperlink to the supply materials.
Another current examine discovered AI summaries like those in Google’s search outcomes can scale back site visitors by nearly 80% for websites beforehand ranked first in a search end result.
In 2023, The New York Times sued Open AI for copyright infringement for utilizing its articles to coach the AI firm’s giant language fashions. A decide dominated in March 2025 the case might go ahead.
Other AI corporations and well-known information shops have been hanging offers, receiving fee in alternate for archived or paywalled information content material that can be utilized for big language mannequin coaching.
Nearly 150 information manufacturers, from The Wall Street Journal to The Guardian, have both struck content material and licensing offers with AI corporations or are engaged in authorized battles over the usage of information content material, in accordance with information compiled by Jaźwińska’s undertaking.
Open AI, ProRata and Perplexity are main the pack with dozens of newsroom content material offers or ongoing claims every.
Google, by comparability, has publicly signed simply 5 offers, in accordance with the information. In late July, Bloomberg reported Google was in talks with about 20 information organisations to license their content material for its AI instruments.
But Google isn’t essentially falling behind.
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All of the Showcase contracts obtained by this investigation included an mental property part that provides Google the flexibility to “reproduce, distribute, publicly show, publicly carry out, and in any other case use the Publication Content in reference to Google services and products.”
Schmidt from Corint Media mentioned the group’s members have requested Google to take away the clause or verify it wasn’t utilizing it as a defend for AI coaching. Google refused.
While it might not be the primary objective of the contracts, a number of specialists agreed the clause could possibly be used to try to signal over an outlet’s rights to pursue authorized claims in opposition to Google for utilizing information content material in AI growth.
“If it involves a court docket case, they may later say, no, we already paid the publishers for his or her AI coaching. We have this Google News Showcase settlement,” Schmidt mentioned.
“If there’s 5 articles per day from each writer, and there are 100 publications in Germany who’re participating in Showcase, that’s 500 articles per day,” Schmidt mentioned. “Multiply that with twelve months, and it’s over 180,000 articles per 12 months. So Google is getting content material from over 180,000 articles per 12 months, which they may use, and that’s sufficient to coach a language mannequin.”
One former Google government informed this investigation that it’s potential the Showcase contracts could possibly be used as a authorized defend, however it’s “unlikely” as a result of tech corporations have typically refused to pay for content material that may be freely discovered on-line as a matter of precept. On high of that, they argue, copyright license for AI coaching tends to be rather more particular than the language within the Showcase contracts.
Google continues to churn out offers and to resume current ones, additional cementing Google’s position within the information business for years to come back. Earlier this 12 months, some Brazilian information shops started renegotiating their Showcase contracts. Luiz was among the many editors joyful to be taught his cope with the corporate was to be renewed in mid-2025 for one more three years.
Google has additionally introduced it has renewed greater than 50 Showcase offers with Australian publishers.
According to Julie Posetti, vp of worldwide analysis on the journalism non-profit International Center for Journalists, the AI race dangers creating what she calls “platform seize 2.0”. She has watched with concern the brand new development of one-to-one offers for AI coaching and the tendency of latest corporations which might be main the AI race, equivalent to Microsoft and Open AI, to fund journalism occasions and coaching.
“With the proliferation of generative AI we’re seeing the identical sorts of relationships develop as if not one of the classes of platform seize 1.0 had been discovered,” she mentioned explaining that the information business’s partnerships with social media platforms led to “seize, affect and self-censorship”.
Big tech’s defence of public curiosity media, she mentioned, was “performative”.
“It was in the end about making an attempt to assuage any form of accountability work centered on these [big tech] corporations and to current these corporations because the benign tech actors who had been associates of journalists,” she mentioned.
“It’s like none of these classes appear to have been learnt.”
Disclosure: As a part of the information media bargaining code, Private Media (dad or mum firm of Crikey) acquired funds from Meta and Google from the center of 2021. Meta terminated its offers with all publishers in mid-2024. Private Media continues to obtain funding from Google as a part of the code.
Big Tech’s Invisible Hand is a cross-border, collaborative journalistic investigation led by Brazilian information group Agência Pública and the Centro Latinoamericano de Investigación Periodística (CLIP), along with Crikey (Australia), Cuestión Pública (Colombia), Daily Maverick (South Africa), El Diario AR (Argentina), El Surti (Paraguay), Factum (El Salvador), ICL (Brazil), Investigative Journalism Foundation – IJF (Canada), LaBot (Chile), LightHouse Reports (International), N+Focus (Mexico), Núcleo (Brazil), Primicias (Ecuador), Tech Policy Press (USA), and Tempo (Indonesia). Reporters Without Borders and the authorized staff El Veinte supported the undertaking, and La Fábrica Memética designed the visible id.
