Ads are appearing across Google sites that have previously not supported advertising, prompting speculations about the company's seemingly immediate need to monetize search inventory.

This week alone, it began running text ads on Google Finance pages and experimenting with different text and banner ads on Image Search results pages. Now Google says that "in the very near future" it will test text ads on News results pages.

This means someone searching for "iPod" on Google's "News" search feature could start seeing text ads alongside those results.

It's no surprise that they're doing this, stated one commenter on John Battelle's Searchblog. "They have more inventory than ever and could definitely use the profits so it only makes sense to roll out in additional places," he said.

"Everybody is hurting these days - Google isn't an exception - and they're looking for additional income sources."

Recently Google has begun selling video ad space within YouTube search results. It also loosened restrictions on beer-related keywords on AdWords.

Google's search share inched up half a percentage point from September to October 2008. It now accounts for 71.70% of all US online searches, according to Hitwise.