I like BBC News Online. Unlike Noel Edmonds, Esther Rantzen and Changing Rooms, I think it an excellent use of the licence fee. It is also a vital investment in the future of the corporation and great proof that there is more to the net than Martha Lane Fox, teenage millionaires and that case-history in bad business known as boo.com.

True, you can ask whether the BBC's news site should really be a bit better given its resources, or the traffic a bit higher given the endless on-air promotion it receives. You can also point out that CNN.com has three times the traffic (because it dominates the US domestic market), but that is being churlish. On the whole it does a pretty good job.

However, it entered a new arena last week, when it announced a news distribution deal with Yahoo!. This may be the start of something very exciting, or something very worrying - either way, it is not to be ignored.

Deals such as this are done all the time on the net (Guardian Unlimited has a similar arrangement with Yahoo! and many other portals). Often money does not change hands, but Yahoo! gets content and traffic, and the content provider gets a presence on a major platform and links back to its site. However, once the BBC gets involved, it takes on a different dimension. Like it or not, it has been drawn into a commercial battlefield and, as a public-service broadcaster, has to be extremely careful about how it behaves.

Richard Deverell, head of new media at BBC news, told the FT that this "was not a commercial deal, but simply part of efforts to make our online service more accessible". No money is involved and in order to protect the BBC's integrity there are no banner ads on BBC stories. (There are ads on the menu pages where its stories are featured, but maybe it's being fussy to mention it).

Now, this may not appear to be "a commercial deal" for the BBC, but it does have a commercial impact for both content providers and portals. First, the BBC is such a strong name that it is likely to get top billing on any platform at which it arrives, shoving out other commercial partners. This is not true of the Yahoo! deal, it has to be said, where it gets equal billing with PA and Reuters, but it is understandable that commercial rivals might be unhappy about the BBC's arrival on the scene.

Second, whether or not the BBC likes it, whoever it becomes partners with is commercially advantaged - if not in terms of cash, then certainly in kudos. Yahoo! can now go out into the market with the BBC name attached to it, seeking other partners and advertisers. It can now tell its users that they can go to its site and get all the BBC's news. It is the sort of endorsement that money cannot buy (ironic given that Yahoo! has got so much of the stuff).

This cannot be right. If the BBC wants to hand its content in this way to Yahoo!, it has to be willing to hand it on exactly the same terms to any other site. I mentioned this to Deverell, and he agreed ultimately that BBC news would be willing to partner with anyone who could meet its "technological and branding requirements".

But it should not stop with the likes of Freeserve and MSN - by the same logic, Guardian Unlimited should be allowed to have it. As should the Times Online or the Independent.

Again, I suggested this to Deverell and while he appreciated the logic, he was rather hesitant about handing content to us as "a rival news organisation". In my dreams! I like the idea that we as a network of sites with 12m or so page impressions a month and the off-shoot of a paper that sells 400,000 copies a day are a real rival to the BBC with its 77m page impressions, the offshoot of a broadcaster with a daily audience in the tens of millions, but somehow it doesn't quite ring true.

If anything, Yahoo!, which sees itself as a media company not simply a portal or search engine (hence talks and rumoured talks with the likes of Emap, News International and Disney), is a much greater rival - which, of course, is why the BBC wanted to partner with it.

The deal with Yahoo! is a trial. Hopefully, it is a step in the right direction. It would be good for the BBC, good for the industry and good for the BBC's image within that industry if it was a blueprint for a global BBC distribution policy, where any site that passed the BBC's branding and technical requirements could take its content.

This could be the only way the BBC achieves the sort of global presence it is after, and the only way it could start to challenge its rivals, CNN.com and MSNBC.

For the BBC to fudge around with preferential treatment for some sites and not others is illogical, unfair and - the greatest sin of all - deeply unimaginative.