Search Engine Optimisation Web Log (BLOG)
Editor: Matt Paines

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Google 's UK media deals over content.

Recent media speculation has suggested that Google has reached deals with several large UK news groups over carrying their content on Google News.

The deals are reputedly being kept strictly secret for fear that Google will end up having to pay for similar licenses with all of the 4500 news services it carries on its news aggregator.

However, these reports have been categorically denied by Google and its spokesperson Jessica Powell said the search engine does not pay to index news content.

But it seems Google has accepted that it has lost the argument over carrying stories without paying for them, especially after losing a test case against the Belgian press. It reached an out-of-court settlement with French news wire service Agence France-Presse.

And more media are lining up to take on Google with Sam Zell of US group Tribune, indicated that he might challenge the search engine's use of his company's content and Daily Telegraph editor Will Lewis recently attacked it during a speech at conference in Paris.

Lewis is reported as saying companies such as Google and Yahoo are seeking to build a business model on the back of his newspaper's investment without recognition and all media companies need to be on guard for this.

M.P

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