"The study shows that the data giant’s rise to become a patron of the media began in France, where, responding to political pressure, it set up a 60-million-euro fund to support press publishers’ innovation projects in 2013. The French fund was the blueprint for the Digital News Initiative (DNI) ... that Google launched throughout Europe in 2015 and whose core element was the 150-million-euros Digital News Innovation Fund that the company used to promote innovation projects from 2015 to 2019. Examining the political context of these funding programmes reveals that Google’s initiatives consistently came about in response to growing political pressure, which the company’s managers describe as a “wake-up call” to the corporation. One key issue is the debate surrounding the introduction of a “Google tax” and an ancillary copyright law. Using publicly accessible sources, newspaper articles, press releases, and discussions with industry representatives and Google, the present study sets out how the French Fund and the European DNI became a global undertaking from 2018: the 300-million-dollar Google News Initiative (GNI) [.] the typical beneficiary of a DNI grant was an established, for-profit, western European publisher. Non-profit media and journalism start-ups were not the focus of funding. Across Europe, some three quarters of the funding millions went to commercial media organisations, the largest share – 21.5 million euros – to Germany. Only four of the 28 large projects to receive funding of more than 300,000 euros in Germany were at regional publishers. At the other end of the spectrum are major publishing empires such as Dieter von Holtzbrinck Medien, Funke Mediengruppe, and Gruner + Jahr, each of whom received between 3 and 10 million euros. More precise figures cannot be provided, since neither Google nor the majority of recipients espouse transparency regarding specific funding amounts." (Summary, page 89-90) more

"Der Suchmaschinen-Konzern ist für die Verlagsbranche beinahe unverzichtbar. Doch Googles Dominanz scheint kaum jemand zu stören. Eine Datenanalyse von netzpolitik.org zeigt, wie Google mit einem 150-Millionen-Euro-Programm den Medienverlagen Honig ums Maul schmiert."