Google has announced the launch of a new commercial partnership pilot program with a roster of major international news publishers, centered on integrating AI-powered article overviews directly onto their Google News pages.
The initiative is part of a broader strategy to “explore how AI can drive more engaged audiences,” while simultaneously attempting to address the growing crisis of “zero-click” search results that threaten publishers’ core business models.
The AI Overview Pilot: A Financial Safety Net
The core feature of the pilot is the introduction of AI-generated summaries that appear on the Google News pages of participating publications. Google’s intent is to give users “more context before they click through” to read an article.
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This initiative is a commercial exchange designed to mitigate the inherent risk posed by AI summarization. As industry data shows, AI overviews can cause a substantial decline in click-through rates (CTR)—with some studies showing drops of up to 80% for informational content—by satisfying the user’s query directly on the search page. The reduction in referral traffic leads directly to a loss of advertising revenue for publishers.
To counteract this potential decrease in traffic, publications participating in the commercial pilot program will receive direct payments from Google. This financial compensation is a key mechanism of the partnership, aiming to offset the revenue loss tied to the declining ad impressions that result from fewer clicks.
The program includes prominent global publishers such as:
- The Guardian (UK)
- The Washington Post and The Washington Examiner (US)
- Der Spiegel (Germany)
- El País (Spain)
- Folha (Brazil)
- The Times of India (India)
- Kompas (Indonesia)
- Infobae (Latin America)
Crucially, the AI-powered overviews will only appear on the participating publications’ Google News pages and not anywhere else in Google News or in the main Search results, providing a controlled testing environment for the new monetization model.
This pilot builds on Google’s earlier moves to integrate AI into its news ecosystem. In July, the company rolled out AI summaries in Discover, the personalized content feed inside its search app. That change shifted the feed from displaying single headlines to showing an AI-generated summary that cites the logos of multiple news publishers, fundamentally changing how users encounter breaking and trending news.
As part of the new pilot, Google is also experimenting with audio briefings for people who prefer listening to the news rather than reading it, further diversifying the consumption formats driven by AI. Google has committed that all new features will include clear attribution and a direct link to the original articles to maintain transparency and guide users to the original source.
Furthermore, Google is expanding partnerships with wire services and news organizations like Estadão, Antara, Yonhap, and The Associated Press to incorporate real-time information and enhance results in the Gemini app.
New Features for Personalization and Control
In conjunction with the AI pilot, Google announced several new features aimed at enhancing user control and addressing fragmentation in news consumption:
- Preferred Sources Global Rollout: The “Preferred Sources” feature, which allows users to select their favorite news sites and blogs to appear prominently in the Top Stories section of Google Search results, is now launching globally. It will be available for English-language users worldwide in the coming days, with a rollout to all supported languages planned for early next year. While this feature promotes user choice, it also raises concerns about potentially confining users to an “ideological bubble” that limits exposure to diverse perspectives.
- Subscription Highlighting: Google will now highlight links from users’ news subscriptions and display these links in a dedicated carousel within the Gemini app in the coming weeks, with integration into AI Overviews and AI Mode to follow. This aims to increase the value users derive from their paid subscriptions.
- Enhanced AI Links: In the Gemini app’s AI Mode, Google is increasing the number of inline links and introducing “contextual introductions” for embedded links. These are brief explanations that clarify why a link is useful to explore, thereby improving the utility and transparency of AI-generated responses.
Google stressed that as news consumption evolves, they will continue to work “in collaboration with websites and creators of all sizes, from major news publishers to new and emerging voices.”