Google is planning to provide British news publishers with an opportunity to increase their online revenues. Last month, the company launched the Digital Publishing Innovation Fund in France, and now it is set to introduce a similar project to the UK. These perspectives were outlined by Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt during his recent interview at the Big Tent Activate Summit in New Delhi, India.

Discussing a potential expansion of the fund to the United Kingdom, Mr. Schmidt said, “I’m sure we can talk about it. The reason I like this model is I don’t like the idea of randomly writing cheques to publishers in the old model. I think it’s a very good idea for Google to assist in the transition of their business model from old to new, so it’s a very good positioning,” he added. The company has allocated €60 million for initiative on the French land. So far, it’s not disclosed when Google launches the initiative in the UK and how much the company is ready to spend on it.

Photo: Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt at the Big Tent Activate Summit in New Delhi, India. Photograph: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP

Announcing the launch of the fund in France back in February, Eric Schmidt stated that the initiative was created «to help support transformative digital publishing initiatives for French readers.» Moreover, this move aimed to help publishers regain their online revenues «eaten» by Google’s snippets of news stories in the search index. That type of display used to give readers the gist of the stories without visiting websites, resulting in financial losses for publishers.

It was also said that paid online subscription should not be ignored by online media owners as a viable business model. In this regard, Mr. Schmidt mentioned a Washington-based political website Politico, which announced that it had 1,000 subscribers paying $8,000 a year, so it was planning to launch a quarterly print publication. Referring to the printed titles, he mentioned that there was “a reasonable prediction that incumbent businesses who already have subscribers will transition them into online subscribers,” added Schmidt.

Earlier this year, Google UK launched a training program, Squared, targeting digital advertising specialists.