Google is expanding a pilot that pays developers and small businesses to provide specialized, non-public content, including proprietary code repositories, for use in improving its products and services, the company told VentureBeat.
The "Content Offer Pilot" lets prospective partners submit selected material through an online portal. Participants choose what to offer and propose a price; a deal proceeds only if both sides agree, according to Google.
The company says it wants the portal to make paid content partnerships available to developers and smaller businesses that might not otherwise have a commercial relationship with it.
Google says "hundreds" of third-party developers and small businesses across roughly 100 countries have participated so far.
More than 90% of participating partners have expressed interest in taking part again, the company said. Google did not provide payment ranges or say how many additional partners it expects to accept.
One technology startup CEO, in an anonymous testimonial supplied by Google, described the appeal of earning money from code the company had already written: “This pilot let us recapture some of that investment by turning proprietary code into a revenue-generating asset, rather than just letting it sit in a repository.” The CEO also said the startup could retain ownership of its code. VentureBeat could not independently verify the testimonial or that partner’s agreement.
The expansion builds on a content acquisition effort Google described previously. In June, the company said it had made deals for specialized, non-public material, including creative and educational content. The new push puts code developers and smaller businesses at the center of that effort, offering them a potential source of revenue while giving Google access to material unavailable on the open web.
Google has not specified which products will use code obtained through this pilot, how much it pays, or what rights it receives under a typical agreement. Those details will matter to businesses weighing a payment against the value of keeping their code private.