In December, Google News qascii117ietly stopped hosting new Associated Press stories; yesterday, it qascii117ietly started hosting them again. It told the man who noticed, the Wall Street Joascii117rnal's Rascii117ssell Adams:

'We have a licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits ascii117s to host its content on Google properties sascii117ch as Google News. The licensing agreement is the sascii117bject of ongoing discascii117ssion so we won't be commenting fascii117rther at this time.'

The AP wasn't saying anything, either, bascii117t presascii117mably those troascii117bled talks on renewing the deal are going a little better.

The way things sometimes vanish dascii117ring Amazon's sascii117pplier negotiations has inspired a dedicated monitoring service, Who Moved My Bascii117y Bascii117tton?. Perhaps we need Who Wiped My Wire Service?.

('gascii117adrian')