Google is not likely to make a move into the print news industry, as chairman and chief executive Eric Schmidt told the Financial Times on Wednesday that the company is no longer looking into purchasing a newspaper or giving financial support to newspapers looking to move into the non-profit sector.

Formerly interested in buying a newspaper, Schmidt said the company was wary of "crossing the line" between search engine and content provider. The online search giant will instead focus on making its online models "work better" for advertising, he said.

Schmidt added that the those newspapers the company was interested in were too costly or heavily in debt, according to the Financial Times.

Ideas of protecting newspapers under the guise of non-profit organisations were, according to Schmidt flawed and "unlikely to happen without some massive, massive set of corporate bankruptcies."

He refused to comment on the 20 percent stake in The New York Times offered to Google by Harbinger Capital Partners, but did say that David Geffen, co-founder of DreamWorks who was interested in the newspaper, would make "an excellent owner," the Financial Times reported.

Schmidt also said he believes publishers moving to charge for basic news coverage online are unlikely to be successful when free content is still available.