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become an increasingly important source of news on the web.

“We are not making money on the back of newspapers,” Stefan Tweraser, head of Google Germany, told a media industry conference in Vienna.
The company pays around US$6 billion for news services worldwide and draws content from some 50 000 publishing companies around the world, Tweraser said at the annual gathering of the World

Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA). “Google’s real business model is partnerships . . . Google News lives because we have 50 000 partners with whom we share our revenues.” Dismissing criticism that Google, as an aggregator of Internet content, held a de facto monopoly over news on the Web, Tweraser pointed to fellow search engines Yahoo! and Bing, as well as local competitors in Russia and China. “So there are a lot of alternatives to Google,” he said. Google reported on Thursday a big jump in profits in the three months to September as its budding online social network blossomed.

Net profit rose to US$2,73 billion on the wings of online advertising revenue that soared to US$9,72 billion in the third quarter. – AFP.