• by Ray Schultz , September 20, 2021

Google is joining its fellow tech giants Facebook and Twitter in the email newsletter business in an effort to help publishers and likely compete with Substack. Museletter, the company’s new content service, will be available in the months to come. 

Here’s how Museletter will work: Writers can create a public profile for their Google Drive and publish Google Drive content directly to it. They can also publish to their email list and “audiences from other platforms,” and offer paid subscriptions to their content, Google says on its Museletter page. 

There will be no charge to use Museletter, but Google plans to build premium features, such as customer domains and welcome emails. 

In addition, users can privately share their content or grant exclusive access to subscribers. The service comes with community features, engagement analytics and other tools. 

TechCrunch initially broke the story.  

Google offers these use cases:

*Jenna, a marketing specialist, creates and shares educational Google Slides. offering a paid subscription plan to her content. 

*JoJo places photos and narration from her world travel into a Google Doc, publishes the doc. as a blog, to her email list. 

*Tyson, a financial advisor, creates Google Sheets to show readers how to save for retirement, and publishes the content to his public profile. 

In addition to Substack and Museletters, writers who want to self-publish have at least two other options. 

Facebook unveiled its content service Bulletin in June. Bulletin allows writers to self-publish their work in various formats and includes a tool to allow them to charge for newsletter subscriptions and website content. 

In August, Revue, the email newsletter service acquired by Twitter in January, debuted a subscribe button that will allow writers and publishers to offer newsletter subscriptions to their Twitter audiences — at least for some users. 

“It’s here,” Revue said. “Today, we’re starting to test a feature that allows people to subscribe to your Revue newsletter directly from your Twitter profile.”