Google said it had struck news content hosting deals with news agencies EFE, which services Spain and Latin America; LUSA, across Portugal and Brazil; Switzerland's Keystone; APA in Austria; Poland's PAP; MTI in Hungary; ANA in Greece and Belga in Belgium.From today the news agencies, which are members of the European Pressphoto Agency, will run contextual ads next to articles that appear on their Google News-hosted sites.Google News, which has been experimenting with ads on its US service, aggregates news stories and also hosts content from companies that, for the most part, do not have their own consumer-targeted websites.The contextual ads will also run alongside content from existing Google partners AFP, UK Press Association, AP and Canada Press.Google would not reveal the nature of the revenue split struck with the partners."These new partnerships will enable us to host and distribute EPA's original newswire content on Google News, highlighting the original contributions of even more newswire journalists, providing you with access to stories right from the source," said Josh Cohen, business product manager at Google."We're always looking for ways to work with publishers to help them distribute, promote and earn revenue from their content, whether they maintain their own destination website or not."Google has had a tempestuous relationship with newspaper publishers, which argue that Google News has reaped massive benefits by aggregating content. Google counters this by pointing out that newspaper websites in turn receive huge numbers of visitors thanks to stories appearing in the service.More ...