Belgian French-language newspapers were back on Google on Thursday after agreeing that the search engine can link to their Web sites, the first signs of a thaw in a bitter copyright dispute. But neither has so far settled on a key part of the dispute: the use of newspaper story links used on Google News.
In February, Google Inc. lost a lawsuit filed by the newspapers that forced it to remove headlines and links to news stories posted on its Google News service and stored in its search engine's cache without the copyright owners' permission.
Google had earlier removed all reference to the newspapers to avoid legal trouble, meaning that a search for even the name of Belgian daily "Le Soir" would not bring up the publication's Web site.