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MILAN - RCS Mediagroup has sealed a multi-year deal with Google to offer access to some of its dailies on the U.S. tech giant's Showcase news platform, Corriere della Sera newspaper, owned by the Italian publisher, said on Wednesday.

Google News Showcase is a global vehicle to pay news publishers for their content online and a new service that would allow partnering publishers to curate content and provide limited access to paywalled stories for users.

Under the deal with RCS, the first signed with an Italian publisher, users will get access to some content from Italy's leading newspaper Corriere della Sera, sports daily Gazzetta dello Sport and Spanish papers El Mundo, Marca and Expansion.

"We are pleased to have reached this agreement, which by also regulating the issue of related rights, recognizes the importance of quality information and the authority of our publications," RCS CEO Urbano Cairo was quoted as saying.

News publishers have long fought the world's most popular internet search engine for compensation for using their content, with European media groups leading the charge.

Google said last October it planned to pay $1 billion to publishers globally for their news over the next three years via Showcase, which will launch first in Germany, then in Belgium, India, the Netherlands and other countries.