Google is trying to get news organisations back on side with €150 million innovation fund

Google president admits the search giant made mistakes

People are clamouring to get potentially damaging information about themselves removed from Google search results (Getty Images)

Fresh from formal charges that it violated competition laws in Europe, Google has pledged €150 million to news publishers and journalism start-ups in the region over the next three years.

The money is being pledged to help news organisations earn money from their own coverage online. Google is hoping this will go some way to repairing its tattered relationships with newspaper owners who have had to comply with Google’s rules to see their articles indexed online.

One of these, First Click Free, requires news outlets with paywalls to allow free access to five articles a day before the stories rank.

Two years ago, the French government threatened to tax the revenue Google made from posting adverts next to French media organisations’ coverage. In response, Google launched the first digital innovation fund, worth €60 million, to help French outlets improve their digital offering.

The new agreement extends similar funding to outlets including The Financial Times, the Guardian, Spain's El Pais and Germany's Die Zeit. The BBC reports that media organisations that have been hostile to Google are absent. Murdoch’s News Corp and the Axel Springer group in Berlin are absent, though Google has said they are welcome to join.

Google’s Digital News Initiative was announced at a digital media conference on Tuesday.

“Google has always wanted to be a friend and partner to the news industry. I think we at Google have to accept we have made some mistakes along the way,” said Carlo D’Asaro Biondo, president of strategic relationships for Google in Europe, at the conference.

Publishers argued that Google’s search functions stole advertising budget from their platforms and that readers used the Google service to find free news online.

D’Asaro Biondo said that Google had intended its news function to be a collaborative tool, but that the company had failed to listen to publishers. "We said 'we know,' and to be honest we didn't know ... it's the customers who have to tell us what will happen," he said.