Yet earlier this year, Google awarded the first grants from a newly created $167 million fund for European publishers to help them adapt to the digital world. The goal, says Madhav Chinnappa, the Google executive running the program, is to give newspapers, magazine publishers and start-ups the financial freedom to try new ways to connect with online consumers. (The International New York Times took part in a previous Google-backed fund for French publishers.)

Euronews, a pan-regional broadcaster based in France, has received more than $500,000 to test 360-degree news videos, and aims to produce broadcasts by the end of the year.

“Of course, Google has its own agenda to show to Europe’s political powers that they aren’t bad guys,” said Michael Peters, chief executive of Euronews. “But this gives organizations like ours the chance to do these types of projects. It wouldn’t have happened without Google.”

The Silicon Valley company is also tapping into a more friendly audience: Europe’s tech community.

From London to Madrid, it has built, or invested in, so-called co-working spaces — open-plan offices where eager 20-something developers can meet to swap ideas and, potentially, start new businesses. These buildings have helped to connect the American company with Europe’s fast-growing tech hubs, says Frédéric Oru, international director of Numa, a start-up incubator in Paris that has received Google funding.

To push its tech credibility, Google will spend more than $75 million by year-end to train roughly two million Europeans in digital skills like e-commerce and online marketing (often based on the company’s own advertising products), an important goal for European policy makers, who are trying to create a digital single market to jump-start economic growth.

In Dublin, home to Google’s European headquarters, that has involved a one-year course in software coding for local teachers. Participants in the class, run by Trinity College Dublin, have been invited to the company’s glass-fronted offices on the shores of the Liffey River to learn directly from Google staff members.

“I’m so confident now that I can teach my students anything and they can just run with it,” said Helen O’Kelly, 38, a former Microsoft employee who retrained to become an I.T. teacher.