Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has announced major investment efforts with a $30 million investment in tech and digital news in the European region.
The company announced that the invested amount which is also equivalent to €27 million will be pumped into the news tech scene in Europe to promote innovation in digital tourism over the next few years. The Company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai made the investment during an event that took place in Paris last about a week ago.
The investment was the first from the $167 million investment fund that the company revealed in 2015. Mr. Pichai stated that different types of organizations would benefit from the fund. He also described the applicants of the Digital News Initiative as a diverse bunch which includes robot Journalism, automated content personalization, real-time social media reporting and hoax-bursting apps.
Google’s relationship with European news organizations has been rather rocky for a few years, but the firm hopes that the investment initiative will help keep the two parties on good terms. The company has particularly been at loggerheads with German publishers over the use of short copied parts on Google News. The German publishers demanded payment from Google, and the feud eventually led to the temporary delisting of their websites.
Google’s new investment will be used to fund projects in three areas including funds to large organizations which require proportionally a large amount of funding. The other two segments are medium projects that will require up to $333,000 (€300,000) and prototype projects that take up roughly $55,000 (€50,000).
There are 128 projects that will benefit from the funds and a German startup known as Spectrm is one of them. The startup will use the funds to develop an artificial intelligence engine that will allow publishers to communicate directly with readers. Direct communication will be carried out through instant messaging apps. The investment will be distributed across startup firms in 23 countries in Europe. The largest investments will be in France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, and the UK.