Google, the web search giant, has announced a new feature of its Google News service. Google has signed licensing deals with four major news agencies, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, UK Press Association and the Canadian Press and it will offer full access to their articles and photos.

Because those four agencies don't have a consumer website where they publish their content, Google will host their articles and stories directly on Google News.

As announced on Google News’ official blog, the new feature will allow Google News’ users to quickly and easily find original stories from news publishers and go directly to the original source to read more.

On the other hand, the content provided by the four major agencies will help Google News to address the duplicate content issue.

“Our goal has always been to offer users as many different perspectives on a story from as many different sources as possible, which is why we include thousands of sources from around the world in Google News.” wrote Josh Cohen, Business Product Manager on Google News blog.

“However, if many of those stories are actually the exact same article, it can end up burying those different perspectives. Enter “duplicate detection.” Duplicate detection means we’ll be able to display a better variety of sources with less duplication. Instead of 20 “different” articles (which actually used the exact same content), we'll show the definitive original copy and give credit to the original journalist. (We launched a similar feature in Sort-by-Date and got great feedback about it.) Of course, if you want to see all the duplicates on other publisher websites with additional analysis and context, they’re only a click away.” he explained.

According to Google, the new feature won’t change the look of Google News or the way the service handles original content published by other media and news sites. Even if Google has financial deals with AP, AFP, the Canadian Press and Press Association their article won’t be rated higher in the search results

Instead it may help the publishers who have original content on their sites.

"The flip side is that there will be more room on Google News for more of their original content, which will be pushed higher up the results." said Cohen

Google didn’t reveal any details about the financial deals with the four news agencies and for the moment the Google pages that are displaying their articles don’t have any ads, but the company would consider eventually running advertising alongside.

"I think it is fair to say we are always looking at ways to help publishers distribute, promote and monetize their content," Cohen said quoted by Reuters. "There is no doubt that this deal gives us more flexibility for the product in a number of ways."

In fact, the licensing agreement between Google and AP was first announced last year and in April this year Google announced a similar deal with AFP. The deal with the AFP has settled a copyright-infringement lawsuit filed in March 2005 by the French news agency who accused Google of posting news summaries and photos without permission.

Speaking about Friday’s Google announcement, AFP's chief executive said it is the recognition of the quality of the news provided by news agencies.

"This agreement with several news agencies expresses Google's recognition of the quality of their work and the originality of their respective views of the world," AFP's chief executive Pierre Louette said.

"It is going to have a welcome double effect: easing access to world news and encouraging Internet users to surf to other media sites, notably analysis and opinion”, he added.

Google News is an automated service that gathers news stories from more than 4,500 global sources and lets users search for them by typing relevant words into a small text box. The service was developed by Krishna Bharat the Principal Research Scientist of Google in 2001 and launched as a beta in April 2002.

Although in 2006 Google News was officially out of beta, the team behind the project is developing new features.

For example earlier this month Google News added a mechanism for publishing comments from a special subset of readers: those people or organizations who were actual participants in the story in question.

According to Google News blog, comments are being published in full, without any edits, but marked as "comments" so readers know it's the individual's perspective, rather than part of a journalist's report.

Also in August Google News has added the video content into the mix. Along with the links to news sites Google News is showing related videos that are marked with “Video” prefix.