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Google has decided to remove Agence France Presse from Google News after the global news wire filed a lawsuit last week seeking to bar the display of its content on the news search engine.
France-based AFP sued Google in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, alleging that Google News infringes on its copyright by displaying AFP headlines, images and story leads without its permission.
But on Monday, a Google spokesman confirmed that the AFP will be dropped from the Google News index. Google also will retroactively remove AFP content from the news index.
“We allow publishers to opt out of Google News,” spokesman Steve Langdon said in an e-mail. “Most publishers, however, want to be included in Google News because they believe it is a benefit to them and their readers.”
AFPs lead counsel said the news services will continue to pursue its case, as well as a second case it filed a couple of weeks ago against Google in France. The French case also centers on what AFP alleges is unauthorized use of its content on Google News, said Joshua Kaufman, a partner at law firm Venable LLP, in Washington.
“It doesnt really change the core issues in the complaint of the infringement and what we believe to be inappropriate conduct of taking our photographs, story leads and headlines,” Kaufman said.
Kaufman likened Google News to traditional newspapers in the way it aggregates and displays news content, including photos, leads and headlines, without a user conducting a search.
AFP sells subscriptions to its news service, while Google News offers free access to its news search service.
Google News is separate from Googles main Web index.
Google News, launched in beta in 2002, crawls and indexes news sources worldwide, including 4,500 English sources. News articles typically remain available for about 30 days on the news search site.
Google has removed news sources from Google News before, but Langdon declined to provide details about the specific publishers who have requested removal.
Editors Note: This story was updated to include comments from Agence France Presses lead counsel.