News Corp said on Wednesday that Google had agreed to make “a significant payment” to publish the newspaper publisher’s news content, signaling a breakthrough in a dispute that has dated back to the earliest days of the search engine.
The three-year global deal comes as Australia prepared to pass groundbreaking legislation to force internet platforms to pay for news. In recent days, Google had struck deals with other media companies to ensure that news would remain on its services, but News Corp, a longtime critic of the search giant and publisher of The Wall Street Journal and The Australian, had held out.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has been a vocal and determined critic about how news organizations are not fairly compensated for content that helps to bring in advertising revenue for Google.
Robert Thomson, chief executive of News Corp, said the deal would have “a positive impact on journalism around the globe.” The exact financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
News Corp said the agreement also included the development of a subscription platform, the sharing of advertising revenue from Google’s technology services and investments into video journalism by YouTube, a Google subsidiary.
Don Harrison, president of global partnerships at Google, said the company had invested to help news organizations over the years. “We hope to announce even more partnerships soon,” he said.
