Google News to add ads

On the same day that the 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News announced that it was shutting down effective Friday for lack of revenue, Google News confirmed its plan to sell AdWords placement on its Google News searches.

The ads, which officially debuted Thursday, work as AdWords usually do, serving up pages related to the search terms (rather than news results from specific publications). Josh Cohen, a business product manager for Google, described the results as "similar to what you see on regular Google searches or Google Book Search."

As the situation for print-news publishing has deteriorated over the past few years, some publishers looked to Google as, perhaps, a savior or at least a partner in ads sales. That was the Print Ads program, which Google flushed after two years. That announcement, made on January 21, was followed by the announcement in mid-February that Google is also scuppering its Audio Ads sales program for radio-spot placement.

Many observers pointed out that traditional publishers, some of whom are only recently coming around to the prospect of Google News excerpting their stuff, are likely to scream blue murder at the idea of the search giant making ad sales in proximity to their content.

But Ken Chan, commenting on John Battelle's Searchblog, took a more sanguine view. "Good for Google," he writes. "Instead of getting all bent out of shape, the news media should be praying that Google succeeds and finds a way to monetize the news. Then, the rest of the news media can jump aboard the Google bandwagon 'cause they haven't found a way to make money online by themselves."

Google Print Ads' final day will be Saturday -- one day after the Rocky Mountain News goes dark.