Google and the Associated Press haven’t exactly been on good terms for the last few months. Due to fundamental disagreements over copyright and payments between the companies, Google stopped hosting AP content on its site in December after the existing contract between the AP and Google expired. Yahoo, however, is a step ahead of Google and just announced a new deal with the AP. The details about the contract between Yahoo and the AP weren’t disclosed, but chances are that Yahoo agreed to pay higher licensing fees in return for the right to host AP stories on its properties.
Google and the AP
Until the middle of December, Google hosted AP news stories on its own servers. As the relationship between the AP and Google continued to deteriorate, however, the AP apparently wanted to get a better deal from Google and Google decided to stop adding new content from the AP. According to the old agreement with the AP, Google only has the right to host articles for 30 days after they were published.
Now, however, it looks like the two companies are close to reaching a new agreement that will allow Google to continue to host AP content on Google properties like Google News. For now, however, Google will not add new hosted content from the AP to its properties.
Regarding Google and the AP, Danny Sullivan reports that he just received the following statement from Google:
We have a licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits us to host its content on Google properties such as Google News. Right now we are not adding new hosted content from the AP. The licensing agreement is the subject of ongoing discussion so we won’t be commenting further at this time.
The question, of course, is why Google would say that it has reached a deal with the AP but still isn’t adding any new content to the site.
We have contacted Google for comment and will update this post once we hear back.
