He was referring to a deal struck by Google News in late August with four agencies, including Agence-France Presse, Press Association, and Associated Press.

Bale used to be the online editorial director of the Times and the Sunday Times. He said that when he worked in the newspaper industry he loved how Times Online had "benefited tremendously" from traffic brought from Google News.

However, “the most recent deal, which involves the scanning of news stories from the agencies and omitting from Google News search results any duplicated versions of stories from these agencies that other news sites host, had wider ramifications,” he told the Guardian.

"While the agencies will consider (the Google deal) as welcome news publishers, the likes of the Guardian, Times and Sun, need to be aware of a bump down in traffic from that."

When questioned by AOP chairman Simon Waldman, Mr. Bale balked at stating that Google News was actively infringing newspapers' intellectual property rights but said that Google had to be considered a "virtual publisher."

He added that Web sites, such as MSN, have to protect their positions as aggregators while newspaper Web sites offer their own aggregation services.

Both Google and MSN have announced strategies for running ads around video content in recent weeks, which Bale said he considered a "risk game".

"No one has really worked out how to do it yet. But as products develop, advertisers will share in that success. Video will be everywhere," he concluded.