We’ve known about a deal between AP and Google News for more than a year now, though not sure what the shape or structure it has...it started with a temporary deal to begin with, and has now been solidified with a more permanent one. This is interesting in light of the lawsuit bought against Google News by French agency AFP for indexing its news and not paying for it.
Mercury News does a story about new media outlets making distribution deals with mainstream media/news providers (the reporter spoke to me as well on this, and quoted the most generic--read lamest--thing I said...oh well), and mentions the Google News-AP deal, though it is still short on specifics. It could be on the basis of how may people click on AP stories on the Google News topic index pages, according to some sources I’ve spoken to, though I have not been able to verify that.
Anyway, as Google has a deal with AP, I’m sure other news providers are also clamoring to get a similar deal as well…
Related:
-- Google News Still Indexing AFP; May Boost Court Case
-- AP and Topix In Local News Attribution Deal
-- @ NAB: AP’s Curley, Google’s Mayer Talk Aggregation—Carefully; AP-Google Deal?