According to this story in Businessweek, the Associated Press is taking its fight with search giant Google to an interesting new level. For those not familiar, the AP is suing Google for using its news content without permission. Since that’s not going anywhere, not they’ve decided to build their own search engine that will simultaneously give readers a way to access and search AP content quickly and easily, while also blocking Google spiders from tagging their stories.

I have a feeling this is as much a defensive move in response to lost income from failing newspapers as it is a genuine beef with Google. I love the AP, and some of the most well-written and thoroughly researched international news stories come out of that agency. It makes me a little sad that the prevailing minds at the country’s biggest print news agency are taking the same path as many of the papers they serve: fighting against google rather than embracing it.

If they worked out a content sharing program that used adsense to monetize their content rather than blocking the number one aggregator’s access to their content, it would probably work better and would certainly deliver more eyeballs to their content.

I’ll keep you posted on developments.