According to the Financial Times’ Wednesday report, Google CEO and Chairman, Eric Schmidt, has said that the US search giant is not likely to acquire a newspaper in the near future. 

In an interview with FT’s online edition, Schmidt said that though the acquisition of a news publication was under consideration by Google, the move is now highly improbable, because of the reason that potential targets are either too expensive or have far too many liabilities.

Furthermore, Schmidt said that a newspaper acquisition by Google is also not on the cards for the present as Google is “trying to avoid crossing the line between technology and content.” Rather, Schmidt said that Google was working with under-pressure publishers, attempting to make their Web sites “work better” in the sphere of online advertising 

The FT story comes in at a time when speculation has been rife about the cash-rich Google planning to benefit from a plunge in advertising revenues to buy out struggling news organizations, with its prospective target being the New York Times – which the paper’s board member Scott Galloway has vehemently denied.

Rebuffing the so-termed “clever ideas” that hinted at Google giving refuge to newspapers in nonprofit structures through the Google.org foundation, Schmidt said: “They are unlikely to happen without some massive, massive set of corporate bankruptcies.”