San Francisco, Feb 11 (IANS): Google has rolled out its News Showcase initiative in the UK and Argentina that will give readers the opportunity to read more of a publisher's content than they would otherwise have access to, while enabling publishers to encourage readers to become a subscriber.

Globally, there are now more than 450 news publications in Google News Showcase in over a dozen countries including Australia, Germany, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, the UK and Argentina, with discussions underway in a number of other countries, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.

"In total, more than 120 publications in the UK will start curating content for News Showcase, many of them local newspapers who do not have the same resources that many larger, national papers have to invest in their digital transformation," the company informed.

News Showcase content from our publisher partners will automatically start to appear in panels in Google News and Discover, and direct readers to the full article on the publisher's site.

People will see panels from publishers they follow in their personalised feeds and they might also see panels from publishers they're less familiar with, presented as suggestions in the Google News "For You" feed and inside "Newsstand," the discovery area of Google News.

"Panels are already appearing in Google News on Android, iOS and the mobile web, and in Discover on iOS, and will start appearing in other versions of these products soon," Google said.

With News Showcase panels, editors at news organisations can help explain complicated news topics and bring context to readers looking to understand more.

News Showcase panels display an enhanced view of an article or articles, giving participating publishers more ways to bring important news to readers and explain it in their own voice, along with more direct control of presentation and branding.