Google to offer AP online

05 August 2006

Google, the world's largest search engine and the Associated Press have announced a long-term agreement under which Google will pay a certain fee for the news it takes from the world's oldest news agency.

Google and AP already had some sort of an agreement over content sharing and the new licensing deal goes much beyond. Under the new agreement, Google News will link readers to Associated Press member-newspaper stories through the topical news search system.

Google already has an agreement with Reuters under which Google promotes its news stories on Google News. Reuters provides a variety of news, information and data to Google Finance, a separate financial site, as well.

Google News gathers news stories from more than 4,500 global sources and lets users search for them. An alliance of this sort can expanded readership and help media partners boost advertising revenue.

AP's recent deal with Google is the latest move it has made to make AP news more easily available to online readers, while at the same time helping its member newspapers benefit financially by driving traffic to their sites.

Meanwhile, AP had struck deals with blog search company Technorati for its member web sites, and with local news search company Topix.net for news stories from AP publishers.