Google News Showcase is launching in Ireland

Google News Showcase, our new product experience and licensing program for news, will begin rolling out with national, regional and local publishers today in Ireland. Showcase provides new ways for readers to access and understand the stories that matter to them.

In Ireland, this experience is powered by a series of licensing agreements covering more than 40 national, regional and local publications including The Irish Independent, The Irish Examiner, Connaught Telegraph, Clare Echo, Donegal Daily, Derry Now, Irish Times, Irish Mirror, The Journal,The Sunday World and more.

News Showcase is backed by our recent $1 billion investment in news around the world and gives news organizations the ability to curate their content on Google’s News and Discover platforms, helping readers get more context about a story and connecting readers with the news that matters to them. News Showcase panels display an enhanced view of an article or articles, giving participating publishers more ways to bring important news to readers and explain it in their own voice, along with more direct control of presentation and branding.

People who click on News Showcase panels are sent directly to the publisher’s website to read the full story, driving valuable traffic and enabling publishers to deepen their relationships with readers.

People will see panels from publishers they follow in their personalized feeds, and they might also see panels from publishers they’re less familiar with, presented as options in the Google News “For You” feed and inside “Newsstand,” the discovery area of Google News.

More than 1,000 news publications globally have signed deals for News Showcase since last year, including in India, Germany, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Australia, Czechia, Japan, Colombia, the U.K, Austria and Argentina, with discussions underway in a number of other countries. More than 90% of the publications that have joined News Showcase so far provide local or community news.

“As the largest local media group in Ireland, we reach audiences in local communities all over the country,” says Iconic Media Group Editorial Director, Brian Keyes. “We see Google News Showcase as an opportunity to engage our audience even further with the ease of access to our latest news and sports stories. We are looking forward to other communities being informed and satisfied by the content from Iconic Media websites, expanding our footprint even further."

“It is an honor for us as a locally-owned, independent publisher to have partnered with Google News Showcase,” says Stuart Holly, editor of regional newspaper The Clare Echo. “We strive to constantly evolve and by partnering with Google, not only are we further progressing the reader experience but also we are afforded the opportunity to further invest in public interest journalism. I look forward to using the platform myself to navigate my way directly to trustworthy, interesting and interactive news feeds.”

Regional online publication Donegal Daily also welcomes the launch. "We're so excited to be able to showcase our news through Google News Showcase so we can reach an even wider audience,” says editor Stephen Maguire. "We are delighted by this new partnership and hope it will not only help to secure our reporting team but increase it and allow us to bring our local readers even more up-to-the-minute news, sport and features from Co Donegal."

As part of our licensing agreements with publishers for News Showcase, we're also paying participating news organizations to give readers access to a limited amount of paywalled content. This feature means readers will have the opportunity to read more of a publisher’s articles than they would otherwise be able to, encouraging them to learn more about the publication — and potentially subscribe.

News Showcase is just one way that we are committed to investing in the future of news in Ireland. We support news publishers in the country in a number of other ways including through innovation funding, programs to support business sustainability like the Digital Growth Programme, and training for almost 2,000 Irish journalists and journalism students through the Google News Lab.

Over the coming months we’ll continue to work with our news partners in Ireland to incorporate their feedback and include more publishers in the program for the future. Google is committed to providing access to information, supporting the open web and joining in this shared responsibility to support the news ecosystem in Ireland and around the world.