The Associated Press plans on hunting down unauthorized users of its online content, a move that some reports say could put it on a collision course with Google News. Google and the Associated Press have been in conflict in the past, and worked out previous agreements concerning news dissemination. Neither company has acknowledged any sort of dispute.Google
claims to not be in the Associated Press’ crosshairs over the news agency's
edict about online content, thanks to a previous deal struck between the two
companies.
In an April 6 statement, the Associated Press said it will take measures to
protect its news content "from misappropriation online" by tracking
Web-based content to determine whether its use is legal.
According to the statement, "AP President Tom Curley said the
initiative would also include the development of new search engines that point
users to the latest and most authoritative sources of breaking news."
In turn, this has led to questions about whether Google, as one of the main
online news disseminators via Google News, risks crashing head-on with the
Associated Press over the issue. The answer, at least according to the search
giant, is no.
"Some readers, users and journalists have asked us if the AP's plan is
about Google since we host complete AP articles," Alexander Macgillivray,
associate general counsel for Products and Intellectual Property for Google,
said in an April 7 corporate blog posting. "The answer is that it doesn't
appear to pertain to Google since we host those articles in partnership with
the AP."
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