Google has signed its first commercial AI news agreement in Australia with Australian Associated Press (AAP).

The deal allows Google’s Gemini platform to access and use AAP’s news articles within its app.

Financial details were not disclosed.

The move signals Google’s willingness to strike commercial agreements with media companies for news content, as competition in generative AI intensifies.

Rival platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have reportedly crawled news sites without publisher consent.

Google previously supported AAP’s fact-checking unit but ended that funding after the federal election.

The deal also comes shortly after AAP received AU$33 million (US$21.3 million) in federal funding over three years, and chair Gail Hambly announced her resignation.

🔗 Source: The Australian Financial Review

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ Google’s paid partnership approach contrasts sharply with competitors’ data scraping methods

While Google negotiates commercial deals like this AAP partnership, its AI competitors have been taking a more aggressive approach to accessing news content.

Nine Entertainment tracked almost 10 bots per second crawling its news websites, with several originating from OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT1.

This unauthorized scraping represents a fundamentally different business strategy, as competitors are essentially taking content for free while Google is paying for structured partnerships.

The willingness to pay for content likely reflects Google’s dominant search position and advertising revenue, giving it more resources to pursue cooperative relationships rather than risk legal challenges.

This approach also allows Google to negotiate for higher-quality, structured data feeds rather than relying on potentially incomplete or inconsistent scraped content.

2️⃣ Australian news organizations are diversifying revenue streams amid government funding pressure

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