Google secures news hosting deals

Google News has secured licensing agreements with four major news agencies which will help the search engine company generate ad revenue from its news service.

Google News will now run articles from The Associated Press, the Press Association of Great Britain, Canadian Press, and Agence France-Presse. Previously Google News directed readers to other destinations to read stories from these sources.

Under the new arrangement, Google News users will remain on Google’s Web site to read the stories, which will be displayed under the News Agencies’s own branding.

The move could result in traffic being reduced to other media sites where stories from the four news agencies are displayed.

Google believes the agreements will help reduce the appearance of the same story from multiple news sites on Google News, allowing a greater variety of different news stories to be displayed.

The changes bring Google into line with the way that Yahoo, or Microsoft’s MSNBC portal license articles.

Agence France-Presse recently dropped legal proceedings against Google News for using its text and photos without permission. The Associated Press has also raised concerns in the past about Google infringing copyright.

The ranking of stories in search engine results will not be affected by the new agreements.