Google has announced that it will kill off a program that sells newspaper advertising because it is not making enough money – a blow to its efforts to expand beyond the internet.

A report from Reuters says that the search giant revealed that it will shut down the two-year-old Print Ads program, designed to help newspapers make money by enticing Google advertisers to expand into print newspaper sales.

This would appear to be a rare failure for what Reuters has described as ‘a master of the online advertising business’.

“We werent providing a meaningful revenue impact to our newspaper partners so we are focusing our efforts on how we can do that quickly and effectively using online tools,” says Google spokesman, Brandon McCormick.

Google and newspapers are struggling with a poor advertising market exacerbated by the world financial crisis.

This adds to Google’s decision last week to let go 100 of its employees and close up three of its engineering offices, yet more signs that even the biggest brands are not shielded by the crises.