Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) has questioned Google’s (NSDQ: GOOG) decision to start publishing news stories on its own site. The site last month began syndicating AP, AFP, PA and Canadian Press content direct to Google News instead of just pointing to news sites’ coverage. More in extended entry…

But, in an interview with paidContent:UK (see full transcript), Glen Drury, UK managing director of Yahoo - which has long functioned as a syndicated news publisher, has over 450 sources and operates probably the world’s most visited news site - said: “I don’t think that Google has yet proven that they have another way to gather news other than doing that. And I would question whether or not Google can truly scrape the sites that use AP feeds without AP putting a lot of pressure on those sites to stop Google doing it. I don’t know where that will pan out to end up and I’m not sure I understand the strategy of Google’s there to do that.”

- Bebo: Drury downplayed reports Yahoo was looking at buying Bebo. Newspaper speculation in May said the portal was talking to the UK’s leading social network (according to comScore) about a possible $1 billion buyout. But, asked if there was any truth in the report in an interview with paidContent:UK, Yahoo’s UK managing director Glen Drury said: “I have no idea, but I can tell you that we’ve probably been talking to Bebo since May about doing their ads and you know how things can get distorted so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was somebody saw Yahoo people coming in to Bebo and assumed that we were going to buy Bebo when, in fact, we were talking about running their ads for them.”

- Social nets: Drury said Yahoo would target ads on the social net - not by mining users’ profiles for personal data, but the door for that is left open: “We won’t be taking anything out of Bebo’s own information that they gather from people unless, at some point in the future, the people wanted to share that information with Yahoo.” He expects Yahoo will talk with MySpace and others when their ad deals with Google et al expire.

- Anglo-American relations: “Because we’re a smaller operation, I think it’s a lot easier for us to get things done and to have the kind of conversations that maybe someone would have to fly from southern California to northern California to have. That gives us an amount of independence. I think we’re particularly good on understanding the users’ need on user-generated content.”

- Acquisitions: “If you look at most of the acquisitions we make, they mostly lay around technology rather than audience buys and most of the partnerships lay around audience. That may give you a steer for how we’re going to go in the future. Sadly, I don’t see much innovation coming out of the UK. Everyone’s constantly pitching their ideas to us and, to date, I don’t see anything that would make my UK business significantly better.”

- Agencies and ad networks: Asked if ad agencies like WPP and Publicis - buying up 24/7 RealMedia and Digitas in the same way Google, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and AOL (NYSE: TWX) are snapping up DoubleClick, Tacoda and aQuantive - now represent a threat rather than a relationship: “No, I don’t think so. Google ... would tell you, based on some announcements they’ve recently made, that they certainly see agencies as competition. Probably on the MSN side with aQuantive, I wouldn’t be surprised to see MSN getting rid of the aQuantive businesses which are truly the agencies - there’s kind of a conflict of interest between being an agency and a media owner.”

- Copyright and relationships: YouTube may be adding channel partners like the BBC at a rate of knots, but Drury said Yahoo’s policy on uploaded material puts it ahead: “YouTube will have significantly higher volumes of non-approved content - let’s put it that way - than we will. We will tend to take a more cautious approach to ensuring that we have the right rights and the right organisation in place with all these types of partners.”

- Eurosport: May’s partnership saw Yahoo produce pan-European sports sites for the continent’s largest sports broadcaster ruffled some die-hard Eurosport users’ feathers, but: “If they’re complaining, they’re not complaining very loudly.” More is to come: “We’re only in the very early stages of what we can do with Eurosport and we’ll have some very exciting announcements to make over the next few quarters about some of the stuff that we’re going to do with them.”

Much more in the edited transcript. Also, you can download the interview audio here.