Google News is adding local news video to its aggregation of stories, letting users watch related YouTube clips alongside the links to news content.
If there’s video available for a given story, you’ll now see a YouTube icon under the snippet about the news. Click it and the YouTube video drops down, and can be watched right from the Google News page. Poking around the Google News homepage, it seems like maybe about 5-10 percent of stories now come with video attached.

CNET speculates that this could be a play by Google to make its News offering more attractive to media companies, especially in light of the recent attacks that have been directed at the service, with the likes of the AP threatening to withhold content. This makes sense, in addition to possibly opening up another revenue stream for YouTube – advertising in news content and sharing revenue with the content producers.

If Google is successful in striking deals with media companies, it could make its News product a whole lot more interesting, especially to the millions of people who still like to get their news from TV. As it stands now, it’s a pretty cool mashup with what’s already available on YouTube.

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