August 5, 2006 – Yesterday, the Associated Press and Google, Inc. announced the news agency will license content to the search engine provider as a supplement to Google News, an agreement quietly settled months ago.
“It’s a licensing agreement that lets us use original AP content in new ways than we have used in the past for Google News,” said Google spokesperson Sonya Boralv in a Reuters article today.
As a symbolic victory for the AP and other news agencies, Google will now pay for the copyright information and photos from the AP, according to Reuters. Other news agencies have followed suit, demanding compensation from online media groups for their copyright protected material. In March 2005, Agence France Press sued Google for infringement of their news articles, headlines, and photos. The lawsuit is still pending.
Arguing that its links are protected under “fair use,” Google includes AP stories and photos on their Google News website, launched four years ago.
“Google has always believed that content providers and publishers should be fairly compensated for their work so they can continue producing high quality information,” said Boralv in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.
Financial provisions to the AP-Google agreement have not been disclosed.
