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Newspapers should be working with internet search engines instead of fighting them, the head of Google said yesterday.

Responding to criticism that internet aggregators were reaping revenues by "misappropriating" material created by news organisations, Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, said that the industry should work with his company to tailor news to individual consumers.

Newspaper groups have been hit by falling circulations and advertising revenues, at a time when more people than ever before get their news from the internet.

Speaking at the Newspaper Association of America's convention in San Diego, Mr Schmidt said: "We think we can build a business with you.That is the only solution we can see.

"I would encourage everybody: think in terms of what your reader wants. These are ultimately consumer businesses and if you p*** off enough of them, you will not have any more."

Mr Schmidt's comments come after the chairman of the Associated Press, Dean Singleton, accused web firms of misappropriating his company's stories.

“We are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it any more," he said. “We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories.”

Robert Thomson, editor of The Wall Street Journal, whose parent company News Corporation also owns The Times, recently accused websites such as Google of acting like parasites.

He told The Australian newspaper: “There is no doubt that certain websites are best described as parasites or tech tapeworms in the intestines of the internet.

“It’s certainly true that readers have been socialised – wrongly I believe – that much content should be free. And there is no doubt that’s in the interest of aggregators like Google who have profited from that mistaken perception."

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