The AP and Google have been in talks to establish a new agreement that would allow Google to continue to aggregate and host AP content, but because the AP has adopted a hawkish stance with regard to controlling its content online, Google stopped posting new AP stories in anticipation of a fall-through in talks.
Today the Wall Street Journal's Digits blog noticed that AP stories were again appearing on Google News. We have confirmed this as well.
When contacted for comment, Google released the following statement:
"We have a licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits us to host its content on Google properties such as Google News. The licensing agreement is the subject of ongoing discussion so we won’t be commenting further at this time."
The AP also responded, simply saying that it had nothing to add to Google's statement.
Last year, AP CEO Tom Curley said of online news aggregators, "We will no longer tolerate the disconnect between people who devote themselves — at great human and economic cost, to gathering news of public interest and those who profit from it without supporting it." He also said that he and other figures in the journalism industry "must quickly and decisively act to take back control of our content."
That attitude is obviously in stark contrast to Google's standard of openness for web content. Even though the AP and Yahoo struck a deal just over a week ago that allows Yahoo to keep posting AP content, we weren't sure whether or not a Google/AP deal would follow because Google is known for fervently holding the free information line.