WE’RE FROM GOOGLE AND WE’RE HERE TO HELP: Google Makes $300 Million Commitment to Supporting News.

In New York on Tuesday, the company announced the launch of the Google News Initiative, which it says is designed to help news organizations strengthen quality journalism, develop new business models and upgrade their technology.

As part of the initiative, Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., GOOGL -0.39% detailed several efforts to help publishers drive more subscription revenue, under the umbrella of a program called Subscribe with Google.

Google unveiled a new feature that will appear on its search results pages that will highlight stories from publications to which a user subscribes. The component won’t affect the rankings on the rest of Google’s search results page, according to a company spokeswoman.

The company says it will help simplify the subscription process so consumers can easily subscribe to multiple news outlets. Following through on plans announced in October, readers will be able to use their Google login credentials as a single sign-on for their various news subscriptions, helping to prevent users from constantly hitting paywalls, particularly when switching devices.

It’s another data-harvesting scheme, paid for by an “investment” in the very news business Google has helped put in its current predicament.