Decisions by Facebook, Google (part of Alphabet), Apple, Twitter and other Silicon Valley tech companies now largely dictate strategy for news organizations, especially those with advertising-based business models (Bell & Owen, 2017; Küng, 2017). In this empirical contribution, we focus on the political economy of platforms (Srnicek, 2017; van Dijck et al., 2018; Moore & Tambini, 2018), concentrating on one platform company, Google. We engage critically with the research question how Google affects the business models of news media and the work of journalists.  

Importantly, while taking a major share of digital advertising revenues, Google is also involved in initiatives to help media companies and journalists innovate in the digital world (Chinnappa, 2017; Fanta, 2018). Looking at the shrewd balance between the around 100 billion dollars in yearly ad revenues and the about 450 million dollars in support to different media development projects, it is easy to take a cynical view. Are Google’s efforts just a public relations campaign and an attempt to lock in journalists and stop them from criticising the company? 

The empirical part of the study is based on two sets of data. The first set consists of semi-structured interviews (N=15) carried out during 2017-2018 with representatives from Google in the UK and Germany, as well as with managers from media companies that have been assisted by Google and others that have decided against asking for help from Google.The second data set comprises of a detailed analysis of Google’s Digital News Initiative (DNI) and its funding decisions.

In Europe, Google has set aside 150 million euros (2015-2018) for DNI. The campaign received a follow-up in the United States in 2018, now funded with 300 million dollars and renamed as Google News Initiative (Ingram, 2018). The support from Google largely emerged as a response to criticism from media companies toward Google’s negative effect on their business operations.

Google is transparent with whom has received money, but provide no information on rejected applications. Many of the funded projects build on Google’s own tools and often seem to be about product development for the company (Fanta, 2018). Through Google News Lab, the company also trains journalists to use Google software. If we look at Europe’s largest media market alone, in Germany around 4,000 journalists have been “certified” by Google after training.

It can be considered that Google is doing journalists a service since user-friendly and free software have lowered both the barriers and costs to do their work better. However, it comes with a caveat. It is true that the solutions are developed in collaboration with journalists, but Google software comes with pre-dispositioned ideas about what journalists should do and limitations to what they can do.

Based on the initial analysis of our data it can be argued that innovation in European media has been on a rise due to Google’s efforts and that Google has influenced media companies to better understand the value of user data, design thinking and experiments – the preferred Silicon Valley method of developing new products and services. In the paper, we also explore cases where media companies do not want to be “helped” by Google, and discuss the advantages of such decisions. Close cooperation with Google might potentially compromise the well-founded ethical principles, according to which journalists should stand free of special interests. One argument is that getting financial support directly from Google can risk the willingness to scrutinise a global corporate giant in a powerful position. As Google’s impact on society is extensive, ranging from the fast diffusion of tools for education such as Google Classroom to running cities, the company has become a subject of increasing scrutiny. The paper can contribute to the critical discussion on Silicon Valley’s tech giants and how they form society, in this case Google’s influence on news media and journalism.