Google makes nice with the wires

Posted by Martin Stabe on 10 April 2007 at 14:26
Tags: Agence France Presse, Associated Press, Google, Google News

AFP and Google last week settled their long-running copyright squabble on Friday when they signed a licensing agreement that will allow the French news agency’s material to appear on Google News.

AFP dropped its 2005 US lawsuit over Google’s unauthorised use of its content as part of the deal that a Google spokesman said will “dramatically improve the way users experience newswire content on the Internet” and will “ help highlight original journalism, giving credit to the newswire journalists who worked hard to break the news.”

The AFP deal is the latest hint that Google is adopting a different approach to the newswires than it is with “retail” news publishers.

Last summer, Google also signed another licensing agreement with the Associated Press. No further details of that deal were released, although that deal was said at the time to be a for a yet-unreleased new service from Google, rather than for Google News.

Google clearly understands that the major news agencies have carved out a uniquely important role online. Thanks to their prominent place on the web portals, the wire services are cementing their hold on online news, particular international news. Despite the multitude of “retail” news sites online, they rely on just two “wholesalers” — AP and Reuters — for most of their content, a study published last year by Chris Paterson of Leeds University illustrated (PDF).

This seems to make sense in many ways. One of the great weaknesses of Google News has been that many copies of agency reports often appear in its searches because dozens of newspapers have whisked copy straight from the wire to their web sites. Why should a reader have to trawl through dozens of copies of the same story? And why should one local paper get all the traffic from a report filed by an AP or AFP correspondent?

Everyone, it seems, can be happy. The wires, the users, the aggregators.

Well, almost everyone. Notice anyone missing from this party?

Tags: Agence France Presse, Associated Press, Google, Google News