Google News Now Hosting Stories From Wire Services

Posted on September 2, 2007

Google continues to show signs that it is becoming more of a media company. First there was the addition of special comments to stories appearing on Google News. Now Reuters reports that Google has cut a deal with four wire services to host their stories on Google.com. The new agencies include the Associated Press, the Press Association of Britain, Canadian Press and Agence France-Presse .

What will this mean for blogs with numerous AP and Reuters stories now basically being contained as "one story" on Google News? It could be good in a way because it sort of ties all that competition off as a single source. On the other hand most blogs are not featured in Google News results anyway.

Mathew Ingram and others are correct that the real story here is the trouble this causes the daily newspapers which were already struggling.

The Reuters story mentions this as well.

Because of Google's campaign to simultaneously reduce duplicate articles, the original wire service article is likely to be featured in Google News instead of versions of the same article from newspaper customers, sapping ad revenue to those newspapers.

Any website relying on wire services as a main source of their content could be in trouble as newspapers and wire services start competing more and more with each other. On another note CNN recently ended a 27-year agreement with Reuters. That may just be another sign that things are changing.