Google Signs Deals with More European News Agencies

Google News is adding to the roster of Europe-based news agencies from which it currently aggregates and hosts content, and will begin monetizing this content with contextual text ads on a revenue share basis.

Google will now host content from eight more agencies across Europe, all of which are members of the European Pressphoto Agency. Ads will now be served against all hosted news content, and the resulting revenue will be shared with agencies, which include Spanish and Latin American news agency EFE; LUSA, which covers Portugal and Brazil; Keystone in Switzerland; Austria Presse Agentur, Magyar Tavirati Iroda in Hungary, Poland’s Polska Agencja Prasowa; Athens News Agency, and Belgium’s Belga.

Google News began hosting content in 2007 from AP, U.K. Press Association, Agence France-Presse, and Canadian Press.

Ads will be rolled out today, according to a Google spokesperson, and already appear alongside some Associated Press content. Last month, Google began serving ads on News results pages in the U.S.

EPA’s Managing Director Jorg Schierenbeck said in a statement he is pleased to have reached an agreement that is “good for all,” and through which all parties can “benefit from the monetization of [the agencies’] original articles and photos hosted by Google.”

The move is unlikely to please online news publishers, however, as the deal will now enable Google to link directly to the source of agency news instead of linking to copies of syndicated content, potentially damaging the ad revenues of some publishers. Some have suggested that growing tension between publishers and Google could eventually result in legal action. In Belgium, a group of content owners already has succeeded in forcing Google to remove their content from both Google.be and Google News.