AFP (Agence France Presse) is now officially the first news agency to spoil the party by suing Google over its Google News service. Ars Technica's Hannibal thinks this is quite possibly the "dumb thing to do": Think about it. AFP sells subscriptions to its content, so when you click through to AFP's site from Google News you're hit with a sign-up page. So Google News is sending tons of potential subscribers to AFP, and they're doing it for free. Quite true, and being in the news business you'd think that AFP would be used to everyone ripping off their content. Many small papers consitently rewrite newswires without having to pay any fee so why the big deal about Google? I thought AFP made most of its money from licensing to newspapers, like Reuters... Anyway, Hannbial continues: If I were Google, I'd drop AFP content from the news aggregator, regardless of whether or not they have a legal case. In fact, I'd drop anyone's content from Google News if they requested it. If they don't want high-value referrals sent their way for free, then so be it. Fewer content providers means that those of us who appreciate the referrals have a better chance of getting prominent links on Google News' front page. I think that Google could easily afford to remove all news sites that don't want to play ball. It's going to be interesting to see how this story unfolds.