That's not exactly true. Google News doesn't put advertising on any of its country sites and thus makes no money directly from publishers' news. It does, however, back its web searches with keyword specific advertising. If a keyword is related to news, the latest news items come up first and ads on the side of the page.

For example, I just typed in 9/11 into google.com's search function. Here's what showed up first:

Now, when I click on the "News results for 9/11, I'm brought to a Google News page with a list of headlines linking to various sources. Again, there is no advertising on Google News and the top links were not listed because they have deals with Google, but only because they were the most recent news items related to the search query.

When clicking on the any of the three links (Editor & Publisher, San Diego Union Tribune, or the Hindu), I am brought immediately to their respective websites where I see their advertising.

Here are the ads posted on the side of the Google search page:

Do you seriously think that any of those are "circumventing" money from newspaper website advertising?

The computer consultant's other argument was that Google caches copyrighted pages. Also not exactly true. 

First off, Google News does not cache pages, only the company's search engine does. But it does not cache pages with paid content.

For example, visiting the website of the French daily Le Monde, I typed Katrina into its search function to find some paid-for archived articles. Then I copy/pasted the headline of one into Google France's search engine. To no surprise, the article was the first result of the query. There was a link to the cached page. But when clicking on the link, I was brought to the same page that Le Monde uses to sell it's archived articles, not to read them.

I did the same thing with the New York Times and found that there is no cache accompanying Google's search engine results for the paper.

So it seems that the two principal arguments of Copiepress, the Belgian firm representing copyright issues for the country's French and German-language papers, don't hold.

Additionally, the Guardian points out that "Similar cases in Germany and the Netherlands not involving Google have found in favour of internet sites linking to copyrighted content." Also, an Internet lawyer is quoted in the UK's Berliner saying, "The Belgian ruling seems very unusual and unprecedented. The scope and breadth of the ruling, on a very narrow foundation, is also extraordinary. If courts start preventing linking, we're entering a slippery slope."

Thus, with these arguments combined with Google's lawyers, it is likely that the decision of the appeal will vary from that of the present injunction.

In a related note, Le Monde notes that 10% of its approximately 1 million daily visitors find its articles through Google. Therefore, instead of stopping the search engine giant's spiders all together, the paper editorializes that, for the good of Internet news surfers, publishers must 'tame' Google, but that at the same time, Google must take the concerns of publishers into consideration. It then cites certain examples, such as its deal with the Associated Press and even a non-financial accord that Google has with Le Monde which allows Le Monde to pick and choose the articles it wants spidered.

With such a good start on such agreements, statements by Google spokesmen that declare the suit by Copiepress "entirely unnecessary" seem justified.