The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz has reported that the Post Co.'s chief executive Donald Graham has been in talks with Google CEO Eric Schmidt to discuss working together. Post executive Philip Bennett described the meetings as "an informal collaboration."

Bennett confirmed that "we're talking to each other about improved ways of creating and presenting news online." Details of how this could develop are unclear: Kurtz suggests that the collaboration could lead to creating new web pages or technological tools for journalists or readers.

Google and newspaper publishers have a complex and increasingly controversial relationship, as the search engine both directs traffic to newspaper websites, and makes advertising money from this news content. Recently, Google has come under increased criticism from newspapers, and an organisation called the Fair Syndication Consortium has been created by a Silicon Valley start-up and a group of online publishers, aiming to help content creators cut a cut of the advertising revenue generated on sites where their content is used.

There is little doubt that when it comes to online newspaper content, Google is a major part of the picture. The choice that newspapers have is to collaborate, or fight, or possibly a mixture of the two.

Source: Washington Post