The corporate legacy media spent the bulk of its lobbying power over the past two years demanding Congress pass the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), a proposed bill that would have forced Big Tech to funnel money to a cartel made up of establishment media companies.

But Big Tech was always ready and willing to bail out the media voluntarily, as evidenced by Google's latest deal with the New York Times.

Google will pay the left-leaning establishment newspaper approximately $100 million over three years as part of a broad deal to allow the tech giant to feature the NYT's content across its platforms.

The deal follows other bonanza payments from Google to media companies, including Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, whose lobbyists pushed heavily for the JCPA while Democrats controlled Congress.

It was a News Corp publication, the Wall Street Journal, that broke news of the NYT's upcoming big tech windfall.

Via the Wall Street Journal:

The deal includes the Times' participation in Google News Showcase, a product that pays publishers to feature their content on Google News and some other Google platforms, some of the people said. The product has yet to be launched in the U.S., but is available in other countries including Germany, Brazil and Australia.

News Corp, parent of Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co., is among the publishers that previously have reached agreements with Google over Showcase and other elements. News Corp in early 2021 announced a multiyear deal with Google and said the deal and other partnerships would generate a combined annual revenue of more than $100 million. Beyond the Journal, News Corp owns news organizations in Australia and the U.K., as well as Barron's, MarketWatch and the New York Post in the U.S.

Per the WSJ's report, the deal also encompasses "content distribution and subscriptions, as well as using Google tools for marketing and ad-product experimentation," although further details of these elements were not revealed by either party.