Google introduces Subscribe with Google for subscribing to news media

Google has announced the Subscribe with Google service, with which internet users can easily purchase news media subscriptions. Google says it wants to ensure that publishers become less dependent on advertising revenue.

Google shows how to call up a notification at a mobile newspaper site that shows different subscription types. After choosing one of the subscriptions, the payment can be made directly with a Google Account via Google Pay. The subscriber can then continue reading immediately and Subscribe with Google offers the possibility to manage the subscription.

The service is part of Google’s News Initiative, formerly known as the European Digital News Initiative, but now launching globally. In the past, Google regularly clashed with mainly European publishers, including about taking over headlines for Google News, but in recent years they have increasingly collaborated, including on the deployment of amp sites.

With the News Initiative project, Google is trying to give online journalism a boost. Google will invest $300 million in the initiative over the next three years. According to Google, journalism is under pressure worldwide and it would help if publishers tap into different sources of income. An easy way to acquire subscribers would help them with this.

Also part of the expansion of the News Initiative is the arrival of News Consumer Insights, a dashboard for Google Analytics that could help editors and publishers better understand the composition of their readership. In addition, Google introduces Outline. This is an open source tool from Jigsaw that allows news organizations to easily set up a VPN on a private server.