Agence France-Presse sued Google in March 2005 and required $17.5 million in damages, accusing the search giant for copyright infringement after the News service published several articles owned by the company. According to the complaint, the news was also containing private photographs owned by AFP that were made public by the product provided by Google. On Friday, AFP decided to drop the lawsuit after they managed to sign a licensing deal with Google, allowing them to publish headlines and news on the News product. No financial terms were disclosed but Google was also looking to pay for the content in August 2006 when they tried to include AFP's content into an upcoming service prepared by the search giant.

"Google's use was not a fair use, but since all uses (of AFP content) are now covered by the new agreement, it's a moot point between AFP and Google. We signed a license agreement that will enable them to use AFP's newswire content in all Google services as well as in its new products that are coming up," said Joshua Kaufman, a lawyer who represents AFP, according to CNET.

As you surely know, Google News was often criticized because it works somehow unfair as the product collects headlines from more than 4500 sources located in every corner of the world. Numerous companies accused Google for receiving praises for the content provided by other publishers but, every time, the search giant defended itself sustaining they are mentioning the source among with a link to the original author. Some time ago, several Belgian newspapers filed a complaint against Google accusing it for copyright infringement after their headlines and news were published on Google News. A Belgian court ordered the company to remove all the headlines provided by the publications and to avoid posting their articles in the future.