Leading Flemish publishers DPG Media, Mediahuis, and Roularta have signed a licensing agreement with Google for their news articles, the American internet giant announced in a statement.
Google has faced criticism in recent years for using news articles on its platforms without compensation.
In response, the company began negotiating with publishers to use articles on its services such as "News Showcase". Google now asserts that it compensates media companies for quality journalistic work.
A similar agreement was reached last year with French-speaking media in Belgium. Now, it is the turn of Flemish media.
The agreement includes content from major northern Belgium newspapers: Het Nieuwsblad, De Standaard, Gazet van Antwerpen, Het Belang van Limburg, Het Laatste Nieuws, De Morgen, Krant van West-Vlaanderen, Knack, and De Tijd.
This deal comes just a month after Google announced an experiment in several European countries, including Belgium, where it removed European newspaper content from search results for 1% of its users. The purpose of this was to provide additional data for regulators and publishers about the effect of news content on users search feeds.
