Agence France Presse sue Google over Google News

What is convenient for someone is not exactly good news for others. We love news aggregation sites because they give us the flexibility to choose our own selection of news. In addition, we no longer require to visit 10 sites to get 10 different kind of news. This made Google News Beta a huge success as it collects information from thousands of sources on the web from all over the Internet and sorts them in a way that we get the best news on the front-page. It makes mistakes of course, but it seems to have inspired all the major competition in the form of MSN and Yahoo!

However, not everyone is happy with Google News Service. Agence France Presse has in fact sued the Search Engine Company claiming that their news services were using AFP’s photos, news headlines, and stories on its news site without permission. Google usually picks such content from the sites it reads for its news aggregation. Some of these sites might be providing the news for free to the end user but the French news service itself charges for the subscription.

Agence France Presse is claiming damages worth at least USD 17.5 million plus the assurance that Google will not pick up any news from their content channels. The suit has been filed on Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Google on their part have released a statement claiming that they are reviewing the suit and will take suitable action to counter it.

The News Service also claimed that they had previously informed Google about these issues but never got a favorable response from the tech giant forcing them to take legal action. This is also not the first time Google is being sued for being extra zealous in their efforts to make the entire web searchable. Some months back, a company named Perfect 10 sued them claiming that Google Search Engine was illegally allowing users to view their copy protected content by indexing otherwise blocked content.