Online news aggregator Yahoo is reported to have renewed its licensing deal with the Associated Press (AP), marking the latest development in the ongoing debate about how search engines like Google and Microsoft's Bing might pay for their future right to display content provided by the agency.
Under the terms of the agreement, Yahoo will continue to post articles from the global wire service on Yahoo websites, while negotiations between the AP and rival search engine Google roll on. No fresh AP content has been hosted on the Google News website since December.
"Yahoo has been an excellent partner for 12 years and has always recognised the value and importance of original, authoritative news. We are pleased Yahoo and AP will continue that valued relationship," AP spokesman Paul Colford said in a statement.
"AP looks forward to deepening its partnership with Yahoo as we and our members explore new opportunities and new ways to engage with audiences," he added.
Yahoo's representatives commented that AP's news articles comprise "an important part" of their effort to provide visitors with comprehensive and relevant content.
In response to accusations that it "steals" content from news organisations and benefits financially from it, Google has defended its right to publish headlines linked to articles on external sites by invoking the fair use principle.
Many publishers acknowledge the value of having links to their content appear in Google News, in terms of both web traffic and online advertising profits. However, wire services like the AP make money from licensing their content to publishers and so are less concerned with attracting traffic to their sites.
Meanwhile, Google News has introduced "starring" so that online visitors can highlight groups of stories on their preferred subjects. Google can therefore monitor developments, according to software engineer Jude Britto.
"When there are significant updates, we will alert you by putting the headline in bold so you can get more information," he explained in a blog post.
