On August 31, 2007, Google News announced a feature that will remove duplicate results from its aggregated links to articles published on news outlets’ websites. This is the outcome of a licensing agreement with the Agence France Press (AFP), the Associated Press (AP), the U.K. Press Association, and the Canadian Press. On the one hand, such agreements relieve Google from lawsuits against copyright infringement on the wire services; on the other hand, Google is able to provide more original content to users and more direct access and awareness of source origin. Becoming removed from or having difficulty tracing the origin of a source is a concern that current social media models of production raise. I wonder how Google News’ model may lead to other creative approaches to easily tracing source origin in social media outlets.

For more information about the relationship between news wires services, online newspaper outlets, and Google News, see this InfoWorld article.