It is reported that the 800 pound gorilla of search is cutting secret deals with several large news organizations on your side of the pond to pay them for the privilege of indexing their content in Google News. The story, which broke in the Scots Sunday Herald claims that Google is "understood" to have signed deals that "are reputedly being kept strictly secret for fear that Google will end up having to pay for similar licences with all of the 4500 news services it carries on its news aggregator," reads the report. "It now seems that Google has accepted it has lost the argument over carrying stories without paying for them."
All of which Google categorically denies. Spokeshack Jessica Powell says, "We don't pay to index news content." Adding, "We have not changed our approach to Google News. We believe it is legal. We index the content of thousands of news sources online. Users see only headlines, snippets and image thumbnails from the relevant news articles. If people want to read the story, they must click through links in our results to the original Web site."
Google has made deals with the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse for permission to use content in ways that go beyond the fair-use provisions of copyright law, so maybe the rumored UK deals are along those lines. But, not only would having to pay simply for the right to link to news stories possibly end up costing Google more money than even they could afford, the consequences for linking anything across the entire Web, are truly scary!
George Parker
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