Google has launched its €150m (£109m) fund for European publishers to tap to develop new digital news projects, with large-scale grants needing approval from a council including Telegraph chief Murdoch MacLennan.
Google announced its intention to launch the innovation fund in April as part of its Digital News Initiative that aims to support and improve historically often fractious relations with European publishers.
The internet giant promises that the €50m annually it will award to projects over three years will come with “no strings attached” and that “there is no requirement to use any Google products”.
Google has divided application criteria for funding into three pools: “early stage” prototype projects that Google will fully fund to “fast track” with up to €50,000.
Medium-sized projects are defined as those that require up to €300,000 in funds, of which Google will award up to 70%.
Google will also fund up to 70% of proposals defined as large projects, those up to €1m.
A 13-member council will have oversight of the fund’s selection process and in the case of large projects a vote will be held before a plan is approved.
The council includes publishing executives from around Europe, including Telegraph Media Group chief Murdoch MacLennan who is the only UK representative, and includes three Google staff.
Google stressed that there would be tight governance and no conflict of interest having executives from potential rival organisations assess funding for projects.
“We’ve consulted widely to ensure that the fund has inclusive and transparent application and selection processes,” said Ludovic Blecher, head of the DNI Innovation Fund at Google, in a blogpost on Thursday. “Confidentiality is critical. Applicants should not share business-sensitive or highly confidential information.”
Google said that there can be exceptions to its €1m per project funding cap if there is an idea that is collaborative, “eg: international, sector-wide, involving multiple organisations”, or if it “significantly benefits the broad news eco-system”.
The company made it clear it is not investing, or taking a stake, in any of the projects that are developed but it is “walking our talk” about being more collaborative with publishers.
The Digital News Initiative was launched in April with eight European publishers. More than 120 have now signed up to try and take advantage of the fund.
The fund is one part of a three-pronged strategy that underpins the DNI.
The others are product development, which Google has said has already borne fruit with the announcement of Accelerated Mobile Pages, which aims to radically improve the loading speed of web pages on smartphones and tablets.
The other strand involves training and research between Google and publisher partners.
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