Google News to Include Ads

Game on? AllThingsD has picked up on the news that Google has introduced ads to Google News. Meaning that as newspapers continue (an increasingly desperate) fight for their lives Google aims to make some money off of what is left. Times are tough all around!

So, will this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back or merely the first domino in a long line that ends with everyone, including Google, paying for content. As Kafka point out this may be just the thing to do it:

In 2006, the World Association of Newspapers demanded that Google News stop indexing its member sites on the grounds that Google was profiting from the use of their copyright material. Agence France-Presse sued Google for the same thing in 2005. At the time, Google News carried no advertisements and hence, no obvious revenue stream. What will they, and other members of the fast-deteriorating newspaper industry say now that it does?

One imagines we won’t have to wait too long to find out.

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