Google invests millions in journalism. But why actually? Where is the money going exactly? And does that have an impact on reporting? Two journalists from Netzpolitik.org investigated this in a study funded by the DGB and the Otto Brenner Foundation. To do this, they spoke to more than two dozen journalists and managers.

More than 200 Millions of euros are said to have flowed to European media groups over the past seven years. The News Initiative is Google’s division that takes care of such projects and comes into contact with the corporations. News Showcase started last; Behind this is a license model for articles from partner publishers, which Google then displays in separate news sites. Germany is the first, Google plans to spend a billion US dollars worldwide on licenses.

Unequal distribution of funding The analysis of funding in Europe showed that Google mainly supports established, commercial and Western European publishers. From 140 millions between 2015 and 2019 were issued through the Digital News Initiative, three quarters went to commercial publishers and five percent went to non-profit media. The rest went to individuals, research institutes, publicly funded media and non-journalistic organizations.

heise online has also participated in Google’s Digital News Initiative funding program: the funds were used to support our open source project Embetty. Embetty enables social media content to be embedded in websites in a privacy-friendly manner. If a visitor calls up a page with Embetty content, no data is transmitted to the operators of the social networks. We originally submitted Embetty to Google under the name c’t Content Shariff, which is why the project can be found there under this name.

The data for Germany show that regional publishers also fare worse than large companies. According to the study, the top recipients are Wirtschaftswoche, Deutsche Welle and Handelsblatt.

Google against ancillary copyright For years, Google has been confronted with accusations of profiting from the journalistic content of the publishers – without paying for it, but at the same time challenging them for advertising income. In Germany, as in other countries, an ancillary copyright is therefore being discussed. It will become part of the EU reform of copyright law. France is already forcing Google to negotiate with publishers about remuneration for the use of content. Australia is planning arbitration proceedings for license agreements, which Google is opposed to.

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Now an article on Netzpolitik.org says about the investigation: “By reconstructing the genesis of Google’s funding programs, we can show that they were a reaction to the increasing media-political pressure of the publishing houses in the 2010 years. ” Before the Digital News Initiative was set up, there was already a media fund in France – it was supposed to end a debate about the publishers’ participation in Google’s advertising revenue. And so the interviewees also drew a picture of Google’s initiatives as PR measures to “mend the broken relationship with the media and avert regulation”.

No influence on the reporting The respondents also stated that Google n