It is a new post, with a focus on helping publishers get the most out of Google News.
Chinnappa will be Google’s first person in Europe focusing on Google News partnerships.
He has been at the BBC for nine years and has been responsible for brokering agency contracts and external commercial income for BBC News since 2003.
According to a report in PaidContent:UK, the hire is a move by Google to dampen complaints from some newspaper publishers about the way it gathers its news content.
A spokesman for Google said: "We have very good working relationships with most publishers.
"For years we've had a European partnerships team that has worked with a range of partners, news partners as well as book publishers and libraries," he said.
Last April, from online newspapers and said News Corp would block search engines from adding its content to their search results, once the paywall was up.
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