BRUSSELS, Belgium: Three years after the adoption of the landmark EU copyright rules, Google is set to pay 300 publishers across Ireland, Germany, France, and other EU countries for republishing their news.

Google will also develop an app to make it simpler for publishers to sign up, offering them an extended news preview agreement that allows Google to show snippets and thumbnails of their news for a licensing fee.

News publishers, among Google's fiercest critics, have been asking governments to ensure online platforms pay fair remuneration for their content.

"So far, we have agreements which cover more than 300 national, local and specialist news publications in Germany, Hungary, France, Austria, the Netherlands, and Ireland, with many more discussions ongoing," said Sulina Connal, director for news and publishing partnerships, according to Reuters. The statement did not say how much publishers were being paid by Google.

Two-thirds of this group are German publishers, including Der Spiegel, Die Zeit and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.