Google News - Just another article announcer?
Google News is a website that aggregates news articles from various online and hard copy sources, facilitating quick access to information on the world. It was launched by Google on November 12, 2001, in response to the September 11 attacks of 2001.
The name "news" arises through analogy with printed newspapers which have long been published for people's general interest in current affairs. The publication relies heavily on advertising and has always been free of charge since it generated revenue from affiliate display advertising as well as search result and content ads. In February 2002, it had 23 million monthly readers worldwide with 28% from North America and 66% from Europe and Asia combined.
Google News' stated aim is to be a "deliciously efficient" search and retrieval tool for use by regular people, in contrast to its rival services from Yahoo! News and Microsoft which are geared towards professional journalists. It covers news articles appearing in thousands of different online sources, including traditional newswires and online newspapers. The service aims to provide a personalized experience with news readers being able to select the sources they wish to read.
Google had been criticized for showing offensive search results in response to some queries, particularly after the 2000 elections of George W. Bush when characters prominent in a news item were linked accidentally with an unrelated topic such as gay-bashing. In response, Google introduced a feature in late 2002 that allows users to opt out of explicit search results. When searching for sex-related terms, the website's algorithm will display no results at all, even if it is relevant to what was searched for.
The author of a news story can specify whether or not the title should be displayed and if it should be displayed only when accessed via search engine. Additionally, Google News allows authors to cross-post their articles to other news websites which do not allow this level of cross-posting.
Another service offered by Google News is translation of articles into other languages. The official language used is specified by the publishers but usually defaults to English.
Google News is run under the terms of a content sharing agreement between Google and the Associated Press.
Google News was criticized on several occasions over its lack of linking to PDFs and other visual information; it was criticized for showing only 250 articles from a given source, only emphasising headlines and not the entire article, and for removing links when accessing news sites that are subscription-based.
About Google's use of automated indexing systems in documents such as Web pages.
An article in The New York Times discusses the benefits of Google News: "The best thing about this platform is that it provides a window into my own news habits. It also helps me to get a sense of how various news sources fare against each other. I can see how the Google News engine ranks the value of links between sites, and it's a useful gauge of the popularity and distribution of news links. At any rate, I do not rely on Google News alone for my news needs; I still read newspapers too. But this site is an additional option. It's just a great idea and well executed."
Bill Keller, New York Times executive editor, has praised Google News: "This is simply a beautiful product, the first digital delivery of news that really feels like news. Kudos to Google."
Former editor in chief of The New York Times, Bill Keller said that Google News is "the first digital delivery of news that really feels like news". An article on PC World suggests that "Google News works because it combines various elements. In addition to the original story, it provides links to related articles on other Web sites. Resembling a small newspaper in appearance, it also offers excerpts from editorial pages...Google News also features an easy-to-understand interface...and a scroll bar that offers screen readers access to headlines and articles."
The Google News has been praised for its presentation of news stories in the "Google News" page. It is possible to view multiple stories on the same page as well as read an excerpt from the article. The Google News page also allows users to choose which sources they would like to see and how often they would like for there to be updates.. It is possible for a user to bookmark essential news sources and read them later.
Google has proved that it has created a new standard for online and search content. The company is also working to develop a version of their compact disk by which the user can download a news site in the form of an index file. This would be similar to a real compact disk that is used to play music, except instead of playing music, this model will allow the user to download all of the important news sites alongside other files.
Google News has been criticized on several occasions over its lack of linking to PDFs and other visual information; it was criticized for showing only 250 articles from a given source, only emphasising headlines and not the entire article, and for removing links when accessing news sites that are subscription-based.
The Google News site has implemented a complex and controversial code that determines the placement of its stories in certain circumstances. It is regularly criticized for the way in which it presents certain stories. This code is not entirely used to decide what news articles are made visible. One key element used by Google News is that it gives more importance to older, more established news sources than newer sites.
In mid-April 2010, after a long series of outages, Google decided to shut down its automated beta Google News service in China, replacing it with an entirely human-operated system after information about Chinese dissidents was censored following government requests to do so.
Google uses the idea of a compact disk to archive important news articles. The company is working on a compact disk-like model, which would allow users to download all of the important news sources alongside other files.
A Google spokesperson said: "This will free up our servers, and we'll try to keep the size of their archive as small as possible."
The following are some of the most popular Google News services which are used by people worldwide:
A search function lets users find out the latest news by choosing from a list or selecting RSS feeds directly from the search results page. Search can also be made by syndicated news sources, such as CNET News, CBS News and Reuters.
The choice of news sources is extensive and ranges from major newspapers to blog networks and niche titles. Google News also offers regional searches, such as a "news of the world" service. A number of other services have been launched as part of Google News in order to make searching for news articles easier for users. A full list of all services can be found here.
Along with the traditional toolbars, the Google News search interface has a "Search Results" feature that displays the top stories from its various news sites, together with newspaper or magazine Web sites on which they were published.
Conclusion and information are displayed on the right of the page, in a compact format. At the bottom of the page users can see a tab that displays links to related stories and news sites, a full-screen display, satared articles and an "clips" service that allows storing media content from selected news sources.
In addition to News search, there is also an advanced search function on Google News pages. This enables users to narrow down their searches by date, category or RSS feeds.
Google News also allows users to subscribe to RSS feeds for selected publications and publications or blogs within certain categories and adds them straight into your Google News rss account for future reference.