Google starts removing Agence France Presse content from Google News

Google News syndicates news from over 4500 news sources around the web. Most of these sources are submitted by the publishers. However, some of these sources syndicated news from the Agence France Presse news agency, which charges for the syndication of their news content. Google displayed the content and images from their news database on their free site Google News. This led to the news agency suing the search engine giant claiming that their actions were illegal.

The agency also claimed that they had tried contacting the Google News people but to no avail. However, after the court case… Google has taken notice and as per the latest reports, they have started removing content picked up from the Agence France Presse from their database, which caches news around 30 days old.

Google however has not announced any time duration it would take them to clear their database of any copyrighted content from the news agency. Google representative Steve Langdon said in a statement: “We allow publishers to opt out of Google News. Most, however, want to be included in Google News because they believe it’s a benefit to them and their readers.”

This news however raises concerns about the validity of news syndication sites. Google News is only one of the thousands of news sites around the world, which syndicates news from various sources in one form or the other. If these sites are sued like Google has been, there will not be any shortages of court cases arising from this situation.

However, responding to queries from content publishers is one way to prevent such lawsuits. Had Google taken care of the AFP’s requests to remove copy protected content earlier, this would not have made such big news online.

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