Google has agreed to pay the New York Times approximately $100 million over three years as part of a deal to feature the newspaper’s content across its platforms.

The arrangement will also cover “content distribution and subscriptions, as well as using Google tools for marketing and ad-product experimentation,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Via the Wall Street Journal:

The deal includes the Times’ participation in Google News Showcase, a product that pays publishers to feature their content on Google News and some other Google platforms, some of the people said. The product has yet to be launched in the U.S., but is available in other countries including Germany, Brazil and Australia.

News Corp, parent of Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., is among the publishers that previously have reached agreements with Google over Showcase and other elements. News Corp in early 2021 announced a multiyear deal with Google and said the deal and other partnerships would generate a combined annual revenue of more than $100 million. Beyond the Journal, News Corp owns news organizations in Australia and the U.K., as well as Barron’s, MarketWatch and the New York Post in the U.S.

Despite a revenue total of $2.3 billion from a variety of sources last year, the New York Times, one of the world’s wealthiest media firms, is set to receive a considerable payout from the tech giant. The company has previously devoted large sums of money to support legacy media, committing $300 million in 2019 to “elevate and strengthen quality journalism.”

The media industry has spent the past two years lobbying for the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), which would force tech companies to fund a cartel of establishment media firms.

However, Google’s latest deal with the New York Times suggests that tech firms are prepared to support the media without government intervention. News Corp’s Wall Street Journal was the first publication to report the deal, and no further details have been released about the agreement.

The New York Times’ revenue stream dwarfs that of other subscription-based media firms. Substack, for example, had an estimated $145 million in gross merchandise volume (GMV) last year, with an estimated $19 million in revenues for the company itself.

Despite these figures, the newspaper’s robust revenues haven’t deterred Google from paying the company a substantial sum of money.

Overall, this deal highlights tech companies’ willingness to support legacy media without government intervention, as well as the disparity between the revenues of traditional media firms and subscription-based media platforms.

This piece was written by LifeZette on May 10, 2023. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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