Google News has begun hosting news from four major wire services: Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, UK Press Association and the Canadian Press.

The company explained the new feature on its blog as an effort to eliminate duplication that occurred when many news outlets ran the same wire story.

“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,” reads the blog posting.

Google, which last year purchased YouTube for a whopping $1.65 billion, has unveiled a plan to make money from the site.

Ads now appear at the bottom of some videos, eventually disappearing if the users don’t click on them. In an approach similar to Google’s AdSense program, selected content providers receive a portion of the revenues.