Google (GOOGL  ) has pledged $1 billion in payments to various journalism outlets as it prepares to launch Google News Showcase worldwide. The new feature will display specially curated news articles from selected publishers and boast a slew of features to promote engagement with outlets.

Google News Showcase was launched in Brazil and Germany on Thursday. The initial run of Showcase will start on the Google News app for Android and is set to arrive on iOS and in Google results in browsers in the near future.

The Showcase will feature curated articles from partnered news organizations, with nearly 200 publications signed on as of the initial launch on Thursday. Partnered organizations will be paid for their content, according to a blog post by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai.

"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," said Pichai.

The move to pay publishers for their content is likely to address mounting complaints that tech giants like Google are not adequately compensating outlets for the use of their content. These complaints have also reached legislators in Australia, where a bill was introduced that would compel companies to share revenue and data between platforms and content providers.

In addition to featured articles from curated sites, Showcase has new features that are likely to help promote traffic to news outlets. Showcase's "panels" are a key feature of the platform; panels are essentially specially designed thumbnails that publishers can customize to summarize and contextualize headlines. Google will also be providing access to selected paywalled content to help generate traffic to websites in the hopes of converting casual users to subscribers.