Instead of merely pointing to other news sites, Google News is now actually hosting stories from the Associated Press and other wire-service sources.

The shift is being spun as an effort to reduce the online clutter that comes from aggregating a bunch of duplicate wire editions:

Our goal has always been to offer users as many different perspectives on a story from as many different sources as possible, which is why we include thousands of sources from around the world in Google News. However, if many of those stories are actually the exact same article, it can end up burying those different perspectives. Enter “duplicate detection.” Duplicate detection means we’ll be able to display a better variety of sources with less duplication. Instead of 20 “different” articles (which actually used the exact same content), we’ll show the definitive original copy and give credit to the original journalist. (We launched a similar feature in Sort-by-Date and got great feedback about it.) Of course, if you want to see all the duplicates on other publisher websites with additional analysis and context, they’re only a click away.

By removing duplicate articles from our results, we’ll be able to surface even more stories and viewpoints from journalists and publishers from around the world. This change will provide more room on Google News for publishers’ most highly valued content: original content. Previously, some of this content could be harder to find on Google News, and as a result of this change, you’ll have easier access to more of this content, and publishers will likely receive more traffic to their original content.

Personally, I’ve used Google News to hunt out the link to a (hopefully) more permanent online archive of an AP story, thus reducing linkrot on this blog. I’ve found USA Today to be the most reliable destination for that purpose. Will Google’s self-hosing replace that? It would follow their company line of generally never losing anything that’s published online. On the other hand, a future contract spat with the AP, Agence France-Presse, or any other news service could dash that.

I have a hard time believing that Google’s going to keep these pages ad-free — or rather, AdSense-free. That’s tied to a further, underlying reason for this move:

Despite Google’s dominance in search, its news section lags behind several other rivals. In July, Google News attracted 9.6 million visitors compared with Yahoo News’ industry-leading audience of 33.8 million, according to comScore Media Metrix.

Yahoo Inc., along with other major Web sites such as Microsoft Corp.’s MSN and Time Warner Inc.’s AOL, have been featuring AP material for years.

Which leads to perhaps the bigger picture: Google’s now set itself up as the content-destination site, instead of just the pass-through linker. It’s a clear shift from being “just” the search gateway. Now, it’s even more completely become a portal, just like Yahoo! and its other rivals.

True, Google Groups and other offshoots have hosted original content for years. But this is a more fundamental shift: Google has, in effect, become a media publisher. Despite claims of benefiting newspapers and other news sites by accentuating their proprietary reporting, I don’t think it can deny becoming a competitor in the news-service sector. And naturally, Google won’t have to cut in news partners for a share of AdSense revenue.