Google's employees in North America are now directed to work from home.
Google wants to fight the spread of misinformation — and it’s ready to throw in some serious money to do so.
The company announced on Tuesday that it has earmarked $300 million to boost trusted news sources, making it easier for readers to subscribe to preferred publishers, and introduce fresh tools for journalists.
“We need to do more. That’s why we’re launching the Google News Initiative (GNI), our effort to help journalism thrive in the digital age,” said Philipp Schindler, Google’s chief business officer, in a blog post. “The GNI signifies a major milestone in Google’s 15-year commitment to the news industry, and will bring together everything we do in collaboration with the industry — across products, partnerships, and programs–to help build a stronger future for news.”
Schindler said Google is working to weed out “bad actors” from its recently launched “Breaking News” tab, using machine learning to promote “more authoritative content.” To this end, the company will be partnering with Harvard’s First Draft program to create the Disinfo Lab, which aims to spot and weed out misinformation when news is breaking. Fake news has been more closely associated with Facebook in the last year, but Google has grappled with the issue as well; just last month, YouTube, its massive video platform, promoted Parkland school shooting conspiracies at the top of its trending section.
Google is also working with several major publishers, including The New York Times and Washington Post, to make it easier for users to subscribe to them. The program, called Subscribe with Google, will cut back on users needing to find their credit card each time they’ve hit their monthly limit on free articles. Once their payment information is saved on Google, it’ll now take just a few clicks to sign up and continue reading. Schindler said it’s part of Google’s “commitment to a news industry facing dramatic shifts in how journalism is created, consumed and paid for.”
And for journalists themselves, Google launched a new tool, dubbed Outline, which will make it easier to create VPNs and have secure access to the internet.
6 Tech Giants Shaking Up News, From Jeff Bezos to Laurene Powell Jobs (Photos)
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.
Jeff Bezos – Washington Post
The Amazon founder purchased the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million in cash. President Trump has called the paper the “Amazon Washington Post.”
The Facebook co-founder purchased The New Republic in 2012, becoming executive chairman and publisher. However, he sold the venerable political magazine to Win McCormack in 2016, saying he "underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate."
The eBay founder is a well-known philanthropist who created First Look Media, a journalism venture behind The Intercept. Inspired by Edward Snowden's leaks. Omidyar teamed up with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras to launch the website “dedicated to the kind of reporting those disclosures required: fearless, adversarial journalism.”
The PayPal co-founder doesn’t own a news organization, but he makes this list because he essentially ended one -- Gawker -- proving once again the power of an angry billionaire. Thiel secretly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s sex-tape lawsuit against Gawker Media because he was upset that the website once outed him as gay. Hogan won the defamation lawsuit against the site that sent its parent company into bankruptcy, and Gawker.com is no longer operating.
OK, so Facebook isn’t technically a news organization… yet. However, the company is preparing to launch its much-anticipated lineup of original content later this summer, and there are also signs that it's on the verge of becoming an even bigger media platform.
Campbell Brown, Head of News Partnerships at Facebook, confirmed last week it’s developing a subscription service for publishers willing to post articles directly to Facebook Instant Articles, rather than their native websites.
Tech is increasingly intertwined with news, for better or worse
Tech leaders are increasingly intertwined with the news business. While some want to support old properties, one set out to destroy a new one. Here they are.