Google has announced a new initiative called Google News Showcase that will pay select publishers for content the showcase is populated with. Currently, Google has set aside $1 billion to pay publishers over the next three years to get the initiative off the ground. In a blog post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai described Showcase as follows:

This financial commitment—our biggest to date—will pay publishers to create and curate high-quality content for a different kind of online news experience. Google News Showcase is a new product that will benefit both publishers and readers: It features the editorial curation of award-winning newsrooms to give readers more insight on the stories that matter, and in the process, helps publishers develop deeper relationships with their audiences.

But the Showcase initiative isn’t an altruistic move on Google’s part. The search giant has come under increasing pressure from publishers and regulators in recent years about the