Google’s News Showcase will add free access to paywalled stories

The tech giant Google made an announcement regarding the Google News Showcase, thatthe users will soon be able to read select paywalled articles at no extra charge. It is the program where it pays publishers to license their content for a new format in Google News. So far, Google News Showcase has launched in such countries as Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, France, U.K. and Australia in several cases, those are markets where it’s previously faced legal challenges and antitrust scrutiny.

Google says it will be paying participating publishers to provide “limited access to paywalled content for News Showcase users. Those users will, however, still need to register directly with the publishers, which Google says will give them a way to build a relationship. (Facebook has also been experimenting with ways to present paywalled content, in its case by linking Facebook accounts to news subscriptions.)

The main News Showcase format is essentially story panel, and Google says it’s introducing a new panel allowing publishers to curate a daily selection of their most important stories. Those panels will be shown to users who follow those publishers.Google is also bringing the News Showcase to new devices and channels. It started out on Google News on Android and is now available on iOS as well, with plans to expand to the news.google.com website and Discover soon.