Google Content Offer Pilot: What It Buys and Pays

Yes, Google's Content Offer Pilot is real: it is Google's own programme that pays those who hold large, specialised datasets, code repositories first among them, for delivering content that is not on the open web, under a licence that is non-exclusive, so you keep 100% of your IP and may sell the same content elsewhere. Google says it has tested the pilot for over a year with thousands of partners worldwide and that it is now expanding to accommodate increased demand. In June 2026, 404 Media published the email Google had sent to a select group of Google Play app developers, promising payment for the code powering their apps, as well as their archived projects. Google publishes no price: the fee is agreed with each partner in an offer process that starts on invitation. The only price Google has paid for a company's private records in public is the $10 million it bid for Spirit Airlines' business data in bankruptcy, a sale the court had still not approved when this guide was written.

This guide is for the app developer, founder, CTO or counsel who received Google's invitation, found the pilot's page, or searched for it to check whether it is genuine and what it pays. It reads everything public about the pilot as it stood on 8 November 2026: Google's pilot page, Google's page on partnerships to improve its AI products, the email 404 Media reproduced, and the Spirit Airlines sale record. It then sets what Google publishes against what other buyers of code publish, explains the rights and the cleaning a codebase needs before delivery, and walks through a worked example of a small app studio.

Google runs no referral programme and publishes no introducer fee, so it pays AIData.Broker nothing and nobody can introduce you to it: you express interest yourself, on Google's own page. What AIData.Broker does for a holder of code is the same as for any holder: we introduce it to every buyer whose published rules take its data, free for the holder, because the buyer pays us its published referral payout out of its own money; where a sale run by us earns more, and only for holders based in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, we act as the holder's agent under a mandate and the holder pays our fee only if the sale closes. Either way the holder itself licenses its data to the buyer, and we do not buy it, take ownership of it, or license or sell it in our own name. Because Google's licence is non-exclusive, a developer can answer Google and take the same code to other buyers. Every term below is Google's own published wording, the email as 404 Media printed it, or a court record, cited to its record; where a line is our reading, it says so.

This guide is research from public sources, not legal, tax or investment advice.

Contents

1. What the Content Offer Pilot is
2. The email Play developers received
3. What Google buys
4. What Google pays
5. Who can take part
6. How to express interest, step by step
7. Rights and cleaning before you deliver
8. The licence: what is published and what is not
9. Selling the same code to other buyers
10. Google beside other buyers of code
11. How the pilot differs from Google's other data deals
12. Worked example: a small Android studio
13. Questions people ask
14. What this means for you

What the Content Offer Pilot is

The Content Offer Pilot is a buying programme Google runs itself, on its own site at contentpilot.google.com. Its page says Google is exploring partnerships with those who hold "high-quality, specialized, and offline content", and that partners will be paid for the delivery of their offline content, which will be used to improve our products and services. Offline here means content that is not published on the open web: a private repository, an archive that was never put online, a dataset kept inside a company. That is the kind of material AI companies say they pay for, because they already have the public web: OpenAI asked for datasets "not already easily accessible online", and Google's pilot names "offline content".

Google's wider page on partnerships to improve its AI products explains where the pilot sits. Google says it trains its models primarily on publicly available, crawlable web data, and adds partnerships for what the web lacks: closed and offline datasets, enhanced metadata and signals, and real-time structured factual information, with science, mathematics and learning as priorities. It says it has made hundreds of new partnerships with content providers in the past few years, and that it has been piloting a partnership program to pay for the delivery of non-public content in a range of media formats. The Content Offer Pilot is that programme, open to anyone who expresses interest rather than negotiated one publisher at a time.

The pilot is not new, though most people first heard of it in 2026. Google says it has run it for over a year with thousands of partners worldwide, and that 90%+ would participate again (a figure Google gives about itself, with no method). The page was read again for this guide on 8 November 2026 and still says the pilot is expanding to learn from a wider group of partners. Among AI labs it is unusual: most labs buy data through vendors and resellers, and this is one of the few routes a lab runs itself for outside holders of code (our buyers page shows who else buys directly).

The email Play developers received

Most searches for the pilot come from people who received Google's email. On 2 June 2026, 404 Media reported that Google had been trying to buy access to code written by developers with apps on the Play Store, and printed the email in full. It begins: "We are reaching out on behalf of the Google Partnerships team with an invitation for a select group of Google Play app developers to join a confidential content offer pilot." It offers payment for the code powering your apps, as well as your archived projects, whether the live production codebase or "archives of prototypes and side projects no longer in use".

The email says what the code is for in Google's words: real-world code has been useful "from understanding complex logic to developing coding evals and benchmarks". An eval or benchmark is a test set used to measure how well a model writes code, so code used this way may be read by a model without being trained into it. The email does not mention artificial intelligence by name, 404 Media noted, but its link goes to Google's page about partnerships to improve its AI products. It repeats the pilot page's terms: non-exclusive, the developer keeps its IP, and the developer may sell the same code anywhere else. The full report, with the email, is at 404 Media.

Is it genuine? The programme is: Google describes it on its own domain, and the email 404 Media printed matches that page's terms word for word in places. Any particular email can still be forged, so check where its links go before you answer. The real pilot lives at contentpilot.google.com, and its "Express interest" button opens a form at contentpilot.google.com/interest that asks you to sign in with a Google account. An email that asks for your code, a password or a payment anywhere else is not the pilot. Google calls the pilot confidential in the email; that is a request, and nothing in the published terms stops you from asking a lawyer or an adviser about an offer before you sign.

What Google buys

Google names one example of what it wants, and it is code: anyone with large, high-quality datasets in specialised content segments, such as code repositories, may express interest. The partners Google quotes on its page are almost all developers and software companies. A technology co-founder says "We submitted several code repositories", and an independent developer offered projects they maintain "as well as others that have never been released publicly". So code does not have to be live, or even finished, to be offered: the email names archived prototypes and side projects too.

Beyond code, the page speaks of "offline content" in "specialized content segments" without listing them, and Google's AI partnerships page names science, mathematics and learning as priorities. In the one company purchase Google made in public, it bought far more than code: Spirit Airlines' de-identified internal business data, its employee emails, Teams messages, spreadsheets, calendars and operations data, with passenger records excluded. That sale ran through a bankruptcy auction, not the pilot, but it shows the range of what Google pays for.

What makes a codebase worth more to any buyer of code is covered in our guide to selling a codebase to AI companies: real history (commits, pull requests and the issues they close), tests, a less common language, and code people wrote before AI assistants. Google publishes no such criteria of its own, but the buyers that do agree on them, and the source code page sets out their published prices.

What Google pays

Google publishes no price, no range and no formula. Its page says only that, upon invitation, it works with partners in an offer process where both sides agree a fee, and adds, on its page, that "just like a standard negotiation, both parties must be satisfied with the agreement". The partners it quotes praise the money without naming it: one independent developer is "extremely satisfied with the compensation offered". No court record, filing or named press report gives a price Google paid a pilot partner for a repository, so any figure you see for the pilot itself is a guess.

What does exist is what other buyers publish for code, and what Google bid when it competed for records in public. The prices below are the market you are negotiating against. They are offers and sales of other buyers, never Google's, and they vary because buyers price code by the training and testing tasks it yields, not by its size.

The Spirit Airlines auction is the only time Google's own money was visible. Google opened at $5 million, and three qualified bidders took it to a $10.0M winning bid in about two and a half hours; Mercor is the alternate bidder at $7.5 million, and micro1 later proposed $12.5 million (a reported, unsigned proposal). Google also bore all the de-identification costs with no price reduction, and its price is paid only on delivery of de-identified data certified by an independent agent. The lesson for a pilot offer is the one that auction teaches: Google raised its price when other buyers bid against it, so the strongest position in its offer process is a competing offer.

Two figures help you judge an offer's shape rather than its amount. Across the buyers whose terms we hold, an exclusive licence fetches 2.0 to 5.8 times a non-exclusive one, so a non-exclusive price should be lower than an exclusive one, and its value is that you can sell the same code again. And a licence for research or evaluation only fetches 0.06 to 0.39 times a full commercial one; Google's licence names evaluations, product features and display together, which is closer to a full licence than to an evaluation-only one (our reading). Our guide to exclusive and non-exclusive licences explains both.

Who can take part

Google's rule is short. Anyone with large, high-quality datasets in specialised content segments may express interest, and partners must hold the necessary rights to the content they offer. Its interest form adds that it reviews applications and invites partners as space in the pilot becomes available, and that partners must have the necessary broad content rights. Expressing interest is therefore not joining: Google chooses whom to invite, and says nothing about how long a review takes or how many it invites.

The partners Google quotes range from an independent developer to a technology startup's chief executive, so the pilot is open to individuals and to companies; it states no size, revenue or age rule. It states no country rule either: it says it has tested the pilot with thousands of partners worldwide, and that partners are paid for delivery, with no currency or payout country stated. Our guide to buyers that take holders outside the US compares the pilot's reach with other buyers'.

"Large" is not defined. The partners quoted offered whole projects and several repositories, and the email was sent to developers of published apps. A single small script is unlikely to be what Google means; a maintained app with its history, or a set of related projects, is (our reading of the examples Google gives).

How to express interest, step by step

The process, as Google's page and its quoted partners describe it, has four stages. Google publishes no timeline for any of them.

1. Express interest. On contentpilot.google.com, "Submit my information" opens the interest form, which requires signing in with a Google account. Use an account that belongs to the business that owns the code, not a personal one, if a company owns it.
2. Review and invitation. Google reviews applications and invites partners as space opens. An email inviting you to the pilot, like the one Play developers received, skips the first step.
3. The offer process. Once invited, you and Google agree a fee. One partner says the timelines are clear, giving it time to refine proposals, which suggests the partner proposes what it offers and Google answers.
4. Delivery and payment. Google pays for the delivery of the content. When payment falls (on signing, on delivery or later) is not published; ask before you sign. Our guide to when AI data buyers pay shows what other buyers commit to.

Before the first step, decide what you would offer and what you would keep back, and have a figure of your own in mind. A buyer that publishes no price anchors on whatever number is said first, and in a negotiation with no published range buyers price on different theses, so a second quote is worth having before you name one. A valuation gives you a range from the market's published prices.

Rights and cleaning before you deliver

Google asks for the rights and leaves the rest to you. Its only published condition is that you have the necessary rights to the content you offer, and the interest form asks for broad content rights. It does not publish who removes secrets or personal data, or whether it checks. Most rights problems in a codebase come from a few places, and the buyers that publish their rules name the same ones.

Who wrote the code. Code an employee writes in their job is a work made for hire, and the employer is considered the author and owns the copyright in the United States. Code a contractor or an agency wrote is not, unless a written assignment moves it: a transfer of copyright is not valid unless it is in writing and signed. One broker says missing ownership causes most problems: client-owned code, and contractor work without an assignment. If an agency built your app, find the assignment before you offer it.

What the code contains. Open-source parts come with their own licences. One buyer requires that copyleft or redistribution-restricted code be found and excluded or handled under its own terms, with a dependency inventory in the package, and Pangea takes no client-owned, previously public or forked code. Code you wrote for a client under contract is usually the client's, and code you forked from a public project is not yours to license as private work.

Secrets and personal data. Private repositories hold credentials far more often than public ones: 32.2% of internal repositories against 5.6% of public ones, in GitGuardian's 2026 study. Scan the full history, not only the latest version, and revoke every key you find, since a deleted key is still in the old commits. Some buyers make you warrant that the codebase holds no credentials, API keys or passwords, except as disclosed; others, like DataVendor, leave removal to the holder; Turing removes secrets itself. Google says nothing either way, so assume the work is yours. Keep your app's user data out entirely: test fixtures, database dumps and logs in a repository can hold real customers' details. In the Spirit sale, the court's privacy ombudsman approved a sale only once consumer systems were left out entirely and only the corporate records were de-identified.

Our readiness check walks through these questions for your own code, and the de-identification page explains what removing personal data involves.

The licence: what is published and what is not

Google publishes its licence's headline terms and none of its text. The table sets out every term Google states, with its record, and every term a holder would sign that Google does not publish. The full list of buyers' clauses side by side is on our licence terms page.

Name the use. The pilot page never uses the word training. It names quality evaluations, product features and display across Google's products, and the email names coding evals and benchmarks; yet when Google bought Spirit's records it said it would use them for product development and training its AI models. Ask the offer to say which uses it grants: evaluation and benchmarks, training, and display, which would mean your code or content shown to Google's users. Price it on the widest use it allows, and if it allows display, ask how your work will be shown and credited.

Ask what survives the term. A non-exclusive licence with no stated term may run forever. Ask how long Google may use the code, whether models already trained on it may keep being used after the licence ends, and whether Google must delete its copy; some licences require deletion of the copy at the end. Our guide to what a data licensing agreement holds lists the terms worth asking for.

Selling the same code to other buyers

Google's licence lets you retain the right to monetize your content elsewhere, and the email says the same. That makes the pilot one of the most open licences on our buyer board. It does not mean every other buyer will accept code Google has already licensed, because buyers start from different defaults: some license exclusively by default, others non-exclusively.

Read the other buyer's clause on earlier licences before you sign either. micro1's terms have the holder promise that it has not already licensed the same data on the same or similar terms to anyone else, which a licence to Google could breach. pre.dev asks that no third party holds an exclusive licence or other right in the code that would stop you granting its non-exclusive rights, which a non-exclusive licence to Google does not. Nyne asks you to describe an agreement you have already signed and its restrictions first. Turing takes a selling right of its own: for the first 90 days after signing, Turing alone sells the record.

So the order matters. A buyer that wants to be first, or alone, should hear about the Google licence before it makes an offer, and a licence to Google should say plainly that it is non-exclusive, as the pilot page does. A holder that sells the same code twice earns twice only if neither buyer can say it was misled.

Google beside other buyers of code

The pilot differs from the other buyers of code mostly in what it does not say. The table compares what each publishes. Each buyer's own guide goes further: Turing's Project Lazarus, Mercor's company data programme and micro1's data partnerships.

Two differences stand out. The pilot is the only one that buys directly for one lab's own use: the others license to several labs or resell. And it is the only one whose amount nobody outside an offer has seen. A holder who wants a number before answering Google can get one from the buyers that publish theirs, and from a valuation built on those prices.

How the pilot differs from Google's other data deals

Google buys data in several ways, and they are easy to confuse because some are also called pilots. The Content Offer Pilot is the one for holders of private code and offline datasets. The others are for publishers and platforms, and one is not a purchase at all.

The AI contribution pilot is the one most often mixed up with the Content Offer Pilot. It runs through Search Console and pays a website when Google judges that the site's public pages contributed to an AI answer; publishers have called the early numbers low. It buys nothing private and asks for no delivery. If your invitation came through Search Console, it is that programme, not this one. Our guides to news publishers' licensing deals and Reddit's deals cover the publisher side, and selling customer data in bankruptcy covers the Spirit sale.

Worked example: a small Android studio

An example, not a real company. A studio of 9 people has published 3 Android apps since 2017, one of them with steady downloads, and keeps its code in private repositories with full history. It also holds 2 archived prototypes it never released, and the first version of its main app was built by an outside agency. The founder receives Google's invitation to the confidential content offer pilot.

First, the rights. The studio's own staff wrote most of the code, which it owns as work made for hire. The agency-built first version is the problem: unless the agency contract assigned the copyright in writing, the studio may not own it. The founder finds the contract; it assigns the code, so that part can be offered too. One app bundles a library under a copyleft licence, which is listed and left out, as the buyers that publish a rule ask.

Second, the cleaning. A scan of the full history finds old API keys in early commits, which the studio revokes before anything leaves its hands, and a test folder holding a copy of real user records from a support case, which is deleted from the history. The studio's user database and analytics never enter the package.

Third, the number. Google publishes none, so the founder builds one. The market's median offer to holders is $2,121 per repository, and the middle half of public prices runs from $1,478 to $18K per repository; buyers that count tasks pay more for a repository whose pull requests close issues with tests, which the main app's history has and the prototypes do not. A valuation of the studio's code gives a range, and an introduction to the code buyers whose rules take it gives the founder a competing view before Google's offer process starts.

Fourth, the terms. In the offer process the founder asks Google which uses the licence grants, whether it includes display, how long it runs, when payment falls, and whether the studio may keep licensing the code elsewhere, which the page already says it may. Because the licence is non-exclusive, the studio tells the other buyers about it before they make their offers, and reads micro1's promise about earlier licences before signing anything there.

The studio ends with the same code licensed to Google and offered to others, its secrets revoked, its users' data never shared, and a price set against published figures rather than a guess.

Questions people ask

Is Google's Content Offer Pilot legit?

Yes. It is Google's own programme, described on its own domain, contentpilot.google.com, and Google says it has run it for over a year with thousands of partners worldwide. The invitation Play developers received was published by 404 Media in June 2026. Check that any email's links go to contentpilot.google.com before you answer it.

How much does Google pay in the Content Offer Pilot?

Google publishes no price; the fee is agreed with each partner after an invitation, and no partner's price is public. Other buyers' offers to holders have a median of $2,121 per repository a repository, and Google's one public purchase of company records was a $10 million bid for Spirit Airlines' business data.

Is the Content Offer Pilot exclusive?

No. Google's page says "This is a non-exclusive opportunity. You decide what you offer, keep 100% of your IP, and retain the right to monetize your content elsewhere." Other buyers may still ask whether you have licensed the same code before, so tell them.

Does Google use the code to train AI?

Google's pilot page names quality evaluations, product features and display, and the email names coding evals and benchmarks, but neither uses the word training. Its page on partnerships to improve its AI products places the pilot among them, and Google said it would use Spirit's records for training its AI models. Ask the licence to name the uses it grants.

Who can join the Content Offer Pilot?

Anyone with large, high-quality datasets in specialised content segments may express interest, individuals and companies alike, from any country, if they hold the necessary rights. Google invites partners as space in the pilot becomes available, so expressing interest does not guarantee an invitation.

Where is the Content Offer Pilot interest form?

On contentpilot.google.com, under "Express interest" and "Submit my information". The form is at contentpilot.google.com/interest and asks you to sign in with a Google account first. Sign in with the account of whoever owns the code.

Can I sell my code to Google and to other AI companies?

Google's terms allow it: you retain the right to monetize your content elsewhere. Whether another buyer allows it depends on its own terms: micro1 asks you to promise you have not licensed the same data on similar terms to anyone else, while pre.dev only rules out an exclusive licence held by someone else.

Is this the same as Google's AI contribution pilot?

No. The AI contribution pilot pays websites through Search Console when Google judges their public pages contributed to an AI answer. The Content Offer Pilot pays for private content you deliver, such as code that was never published.

What this means for you

If Google has invited you, or you are thinking of expressing interest, the pilot is a genuine buyer with open terms and no published price. These steps put you in a position to answer it well.

1. Check the email's links go to contentpilot.google.com before you reply or sign in.
2. Confirm you own the code: staff-written code, an assignment for any agency or contractor work, and the open-source licences inside it. The readiness check asks the right questions.
3. Clean the history: scan every commit for secrets and revoke them, and keep user data out.
4. Get a figure first: a valuation of your code against the market's published prices, and ideally a competing offer, since Google raised its bid when it had to compete.
5. Ask for the terms Google does not publish: the uses, the licence term, payment timing and deletion. Our offer check reads an offer against other buyers' clauses, and how to negotiate covers the rest.
6. Tell other buyers about the Google licence before they make their offers.

If you hold code or records and want them in front of every buyer whose rules take them, AIData.Broker introduces you free, paid by the buyers' own referral programmes, and Google's non-exclusive licence leaves that open. For the wider picture, see how AI companies get their training data, the prices guide, and an offer in your inbox, our page for anyone emailed an offer for their data.