Google is paying the non-profit AP news service for rights to publish its content. The size of the deal and other details have not been disclosed.

This could help many other content producers to strike similar deals. However, because the terms are unknown, Google has a key advantage in negotiating similar content deals.

Google has been coming under pressure to pay content producers and it is being sued by AFP (Agence France-Presse). Its defense is that it is protected by "fair use" laws and that it sends traffic to the content owner's web sites.

However, financially challenged and hard-pressed newspapers, and other publishers, aren't very good at selling online advertising. This means Google's claim of sending traffic to a news organisations offers them little in compensation because they cannot monetize the increase in traffic well.

Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Watch managed to extract a few nuggets of information from various clues and sources. He says the deal is not a pay per click model but is related to a new service Google is planning.

Search Engine Watch: Google-AP Deal Not Pay-Per-Click & Some Further Details