Fake news. False news. Alternative facts. In an effort to clean up those perceptions, Google is pledging to spend $300 million over the next three years to support authoritative journalism.

Google’s campaign, which was announced at an event in New York on Tuesday, will be known as the Google News Initiative. Among the initiative’s goals are making it easier for Google users to subscribe to news publications, and giving publishers new tools to create fast-loading mobile pages. The project is Google’s most ambitious attempt yet to improve the quality of information it shows to users at a time when tech companies have come under criticism for letting hoaxes and misinformation bloom on their services, writes Kevin Roos in the New York Times and for the Philadelphia Business Journal.

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As part of its efforts, Google is creating a Disinfo Lab in partnership with the Harvard Kennedy School’s First Draft, which will attempt to identify false news during critical breaking news situations. Google and YouTube, the video site owned by Google’s parent company, have been criticized for allowing conspiracy theories and unreliable partisan sources to filter to the top of search results for breaking news and for having failed to stop the spread of false news during the 2016 presidential race.

Richard Gingras, Google’s vice president of news products, said the company had built new tools, including some already in operation, to prevent malicious actors from gaming its search algorithms to spread disinformation.

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