Google News offers free access to paywall protected content

Google has a sweet surprise for Google News users. It allows paid content users through its platform for free.

Google launched the Google News storefront in October this year. As part of this initiative, the company is investing $1 billion in news, which also includes partner publications around the world. Today, almost two months later, the company announced a major update to Google News Showcase, which the company says will make it more useful for both publishers and users.

Google said it will soon start offering people limited access to paywall-protected content in partnership with some news publishers. Paywalls are a crucial part of the revenue strategies of some publishers. To achieve this goal, we will pay participating partners to provide limited access to content submitted to a paid wall to News Showcase users, Google wrote in a blog post. This doesn’t mean that you will get unlimited access to paid content, but it will ensure that users have some degree of access to paid content.

While users have access to content protected by a paywall, they will still need to register with the individual news editor.

But there is a catch. This feature is not yet available in all countries of the world. Google claims that nearly 400 news posts in countries like Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, France, UK and Australia have signed up for News Showcase and that it is in talks with publications in a number of other countries for the same. So if you are in India, you will not have access to this incredibly useful feature yet.

On top of that, Google announced that News Showcase has expanded to Google News on iOS and will soon arrive on news.google.com and Discover. The company also said that a new type of News Showcase panel will now include a list of important articles selected daily by users’ favorite editors. Finally, the company said that relevant national and local posts will now be displayed in the For You feed.