(3 September 2007 2:29 pm)

MUMBAI: Google has begun hosting news items produced by The Associated Press and three other news services on its own web site.

In the past two years, the internet search giant negotiated licensing deals with the AP and Agence France Presse, The Press Association in the United Kingdom and The Canadian Press. Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed.

The news services had raised concerns about whether Google had been infringing on their copyrights, by sending readers to their destinations.

The move could, however, reduce internet traffic to other media sites where those stories and pictures are also found. Further, this could reduce the online advertising revenue of newspapers and broadcasters.

This means that now visitors on Google in reading an AP story will remain on Google's website unless they click on a link that enables them to read the same story elsewhere.

Previously, because wire services' Web sites typically feature either a small sample or none of their stories, the way to read their articles was go to the sites of their syndication clients, such as newspapers.

Google reasons that under this new approach, readers won't have to pore through search results listing the same story posted on different sites. That would make it easier to discover other news stories at other Web sites that might previously have been buried.

Google News Product manager Josh Cohen said, "This may result in certain publishers losing traffic for their news wire stories, but it will allow more room for original content."

Despite Google's dominance in search, its news section lags behind rival Yahoo. According to comScore Media Metrix data, in July, Google News attracted 9.6 million visitors compared to Yahoo News' 33.8 million.

Google has not made any immediate plans to run ads alongside the news hosted on its site.