Google’s News Partnerships APAC head: Nobody has yet cracked challenge of getting people to read what they need to know

“Google works best with the news industry when we are genuinely partnered on common goals,” Kate Beddoe, director of Google’s News Partnerships in APAC, said, adding that “it is harder to do that when there is a third party in the mix”.

Beddoe, who “worked very closely on the news media bargaining code where the government did get into the middle” in Australia, said Google learned some “very valuable lessons as to why you want to be listening and why we need to be a good partner, responding to the needs of the industry”. The mandatory Australian code aimed at helping “sustainability of public interest journalism” enabled eligible news businesses to bargain individually or collectively with digital platforms