An older IDG News story points out that the Google/AP deal, which was announced a year ago and caused much speculation about plans to turn Google News into a money making service, has yielded nothing new. In that deal the two companies announced that new products and services would be forthcoming based on Google’s new license to use AP material.
A more jaundiced view might be that Google paid AP to keep AP from suing, and to preserve Google News’ ability to crawl and re-use AP intellectual property. But in order to not have to do this for everyone, the deal was structured in a way that appears that Google’s intent was to create new products. However, that has not occurred.
When describing the AP deal a year ago, Google said that it was intended to let Google use original AP content in a broader manner than in Google News for future features and products.
“We are very excited about the innovative new products we will build with full access to this [Associated Press] content,” Google said in a statement then. “Google News is fully consistent with fair use and always has been.”
However, the licensing deal is now more than a year old — it had been signed a few months before it was actually announced in August of last year — and the promised new Google services and features are nowhere to be seen.
On Wednesday, a Google spokesman confirmed the AP deal hasn’t produced any new offerings yet.