For reasons unclear at this stage (but perhaps because they can), Google has began hosting news content produced by The Associated Press and three other news services. This means the news is hosted on Googles own servers as opposed to linking to other sources.

If you were not aware, Google has been targeted by many a law suit from online Newspapers who claim among many things, increased bandwidth costs associated with their stories appearing on Google news. It's basically a bogus claim, as a more realistic reason would be due to the fact they don't like seeing their own content mixed in among competitors, as it screws with targeted advertising campaigns and stats.

As an example, "Perth Today" should rightfully assume that an overwhelming majority of their traffic comes from Perth, and rightfully have Perth based adverts paid for by businesses with Perth interests. News aggregators like make that less effective.

So, Google now hosting their own news content will mean three things. Firstly, the news item will only show up a single time as opposed to hundreds (as many other sites simply copy/paste stories from each other). We will also know that what we are reading is from the original author.

Secondly, there will be a large traffic (bandwidth) reduction for the online newspapers who have complained in the past. That's their problem solved, but it leads to another...

Third, something they probably will miss, is the reduced traffic will translate into lost revenue for their advertisers. Ouch.

I hope they didn't expect to eat the cake as well?

Links:

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• Google Starts Hosting AP Content