Google News

Google News

Google News homepage
URL	news.google.com
Type of site	News
Registration	Not required
Available language(s)	Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malayalam, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu and Turkish.
Owner	Google
Created by	Google
Launched	March 2002

Google News is a free news aggregator provided by Google Inc, selecting recent items from thousands of publications by an automatic aggregation algorithm.

Launched in September 2002, the service was tagged as a beta test for over three years until January 2006.^[1]

The initial idea was developed by Krishna Bharat,^[2][3]

Technical specifications

Introduced as a beta release in March 2002, the Google News service came out of beta on January 23, 2006. Different versions of the aggregator are available for more than 40 regions in 19 languages (as of July 31, 2008), with continuing development ongoing. Currently, service in the following languages is offered: Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malayalam, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu and Turkish.

The service covers news articles appearing within the past 30 days on various news websites. In total, Google News aggregates content from more than 25,000 publishers.^[4] For the English language it covers about 4,500 sites^{[citation needed]}; for other languages, fewer. Its front page provides roughly the first 200 characters of the article and a link to its larger content. Websites may or may not require a subscription; sites requiring subscription are noted in the article description.^[5]

The layout of Google News underwent a major revision on May 16, 2011.

On July 14, 2011, Google introduced "Google News Badges" and split up the Sci/Tech section into 2 sections: Science and Technology.^[6]

Article selection

In March 2005 attention was called to Google's inclusion of the white supremacist National Vanguard magazine, and the resulting controversy prompted Google News to remove the site from its service. In another case, Google was criticized for not including sources that are censored in China. On September 27, 2004, on the official Google Blog, the Google Team wrote: "For users inside the People's Republic of China, we have chosen not to include sources that are inaccessible from within that country."

News agencies

In March 2005, Agence France Presse (AFP) sued Google for $17.5 million, alleging that Google News infringed on its copyright because "Google includes AFP’s photos, stories and news headlines on Google News without permission from Agence France Presse."[1] [2] It was also alleged that Google ignored a cease and desist order, though Google counters that it has opt-out procedures which AFP could have followed but did not. Google now hosts Agence France-Presse news, as well as the Associated Press, Press Association and the Canadian Press. This arrangement started in August 2007.^[7] In 2007 Google announced it was paying for Associated Press content displayed in Google News, however the articles are not permanently archived.^[8][9] That arrangement ceased on December 23, 2009 when Google News ceased carrying Associated Press content.^[10]

Belgium opposition

In 2007, a Belgian court ruled that Google did not have the right to display the lead paragraph from French-language Belgian news sources when Google aggregated news stories.^[11]

Features and customization

Google News provides searching, and the choice of sorting the results by date and time of publishing (not to be confused with date and time of the news' happening) or grouping them (and also grouping without searching). In the English versions, there are options to tailor the grouping to a selected national audience.

Users can request e-mail "alerts" on various keyword topics by subscribing to Google News Alerts. E-mails are sent to subscribers whenever news articles matching their requests come online. Alerts are also available via RSS and Atom feeds.

Users used to be able to customize the displayed sections, their location on the page, and how many stories are visible with a JavaScript-based drag and drop interface. However, for the US site, this has been disabled in favor of a new layout; roll-out of this layout is planned for other locales in the near future. Stories from different editions of Google News can be combined to form one personalized page, with the options stored in a cookie. The service has been integrated with Google Search History since November 2005. Upon its graduation from beta, a section was added that displays recommended news based on the user's Google News search history and the articles the user has clicked on (if the user has signed up for Search History).

News Archive Search

Main article: Google News Archive

On June 6, 2006, Google News expanded, adding a News Archive Search feature, offering users historical archives going back more than 200 years from some of its sources. There was a timeline view available, to select news from various years.

An expansion of the service was announced on September 8, 2008, when Google News began to offer indexed content from scanned newspapers.^[12] The depth of chronological coverage varies; beginning in 2008, the entire content of the New York Times back to its founding in 1851 has been available.

In early 2010, Google removed direct access to the archive search from the main Google News page, advanced news search page and default search results pages. These pages indicated that the search covered "Any time", but did not include the archive and only included recent news. This feature had previously been available by clicking "All dates", but after the change could only be found by clicking through the advanced search page to the Archive Search page.

During the summer of 2010 Google decided to redesign the format of the Google news page creating a firestorm of complaints.^[13]

In May 2011, Google cancelled plans to scan further old newspapers. About 60 million newspaper pages had been scanned prior to this event.^[14] Google announced that it would instead focus on "Google One Pass, a platform that enables publishers to sell content and subscriptions directly from their own sites."^[15]

In August 2011, the "News Archive Advanced Search" functionality was removed entirely, again generating complaints from regular users who found that the changes rendered the service unusable.^[16] Archival newspaper articles could still be accessed via the Google News Search page, but key functionalites such as the timeline view and ability to specify more than 10 results per page were removed.

Coverage artifacts

On September 7, 2008, United Airlines, which was the subject of an indexed, archived article, lost and later not quite regained USD 1 billion in market value when a 2002 Chicago Tribune article about the bankruptcy filing of the airline in that year appeared in the current "most viewed" category on the website of the Sun-Sentinel, a sister paper.^[17] Google News index's next pass found the link as new news, and Income Security Advisors found the Google result to be new news, which was passed along to Bloomberg News where it was briefly a current headline and very widely viewed.^[17]

First click free

On December 1, 2009 Google announced changes to their "first click free" program^[18] which is running since 2008 and allows users to find and read articles behind a paywall. The reader's first click to the content is free, and the number after that would be set by the content provider.^[19]

Sources for news

As a news aggregator site, Google uses its own software to determine which stories to show from the online news sources it watches. Human editorial input does come into the system, however, in choosing exactly which sources Google News will pick from. This is where some of the controversy over Google News originates, when some news sources are included when visitors feel they don't deserve it, and when other news sources are excluded when visitors feel they ought to be included. For examples, see the above mentions of Indymedia, or National Vanguard.

The actual list of sources is not known outside of Google. The stated information from Google is that it watches more than 4,500 English-language news sites. In the absence of a list, many independent sites have come up with their own ways of determining Google's news sources, as in the chart below.

Wikipedia was a Google news source for a period of time in 2009.^[20]

Example list of sources for English edition, as of May 2007

The site Google News Report monitors the Google News homepage, and for May 2007, published this list of the top 26 sites most-often referenced by Google News.

Rank	News Source
1	The New York Times
2	The Washington Post
3	Houston Chronicle
4	Bloomberg L.P.
5	Los Angeles Times
6	Reuters
7	Forbes
8	Monsters and Critics.com
9	guardian.co.uk
10	Voice of America
11	International Herald Tribune
12	Boston Globe
13	Chicago Tribune
14	BBC News
15	San Francisco Chronicle
16	CBS News
17	Times Online
18	Xinhua
19	Wall Street Journal
20	USA Today
21	Fox News
22	CNN
23	Seattle Post Intelligencer
24	MSNBC
25	ABC News
25	Daily Mail and Mail On Sunday
26	The Times of India

More Sources

Google has listed links to its various RSS Feeds.

See also

Ask BigNews BigNews.biz Google Fast Flip Google search

List of Google services and tools Yahoo! News

Notes

1. ^ Krishna Bharat, "And now, News", The Official Google Blog, January 23, 2006. "We're taking Google News out of beta! When we launched the English-language edition in September 2002, we entered untested waters with a grand experiment in news browsing – using computers to organize the world's news in real time and providing a bird's eye view of what's being reported on virtually any topic. By presenting news "clusters" (related articles in a group), we thought it would encourage readers to get a broader perspective by digging deeper into the news – reading ten articles instead of one, perhaps – and then gain a better understanding of the issues, which could ultimately benefit society. A bit more than three years later, we offer 22 regional editions in 10 languages, and have a better sense of how people use Google News." Accessed June 19, 2008.
2. ^ Glaser, Mark (2010-02-04). "Google News to Publishers: Let's Make Love Not War". PBS. http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2010/02/google-news-to-publishers-lets-make-love-not-war035.html. Retrieved 2010-04-02. 
3. ^ "Google Friends Newsletter - Q&A with Krishna Bharat". Google. July 2003. http://www.google.com/googlefriends/morejul03.html. Retrieved 2009-04-04. 
4. ^ Cohen, Joshua (December 2, 2009). "Same Protocol, More Options for News Publishers". Google News Blog. http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/same-protocol-more-options-for-news.html. Retrieved April 5, 2010. "There are more than 25,000 publishers from around the world in Google News today." 
5. ^ "Technical Requirements: Registration/subscription sites". Google News Help Center. http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=40543. Retrieved April 5, 2010. "[...] we'll add a "(subscription)" tag to your publication name when your articles appear in our search results." 
6. ^ Mohanty, Natasha (July 14, 2011). "Google News Blog: Shareable Google News badges for your favorite topics". Blogger. http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/shareable-google-news-badges-for-your.html. Retrieved 15 July 2011. 
7. ^ "Google starts hosting news stories". DTM news. August 3, 2007. http://news.directtrafficmedia.co.uk/Google_starts_hosting_news_stories_18265222.html. 
8. ^ "Google News Becomes A Publisher.". Information Week. August 31, 2007. http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=PBT2QGMTUGF0AQSNDLOSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=201803549&_requestid=555255. Retrieved April 26, 2008. ""Because the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, U.K. Press Association and the Canadian Press don't have a consumer Web site where they publish their content, they have not been able to benefit from the traffic that Google News drives to other publishers," Josh Cohen, business product manager for Google News, explained in a blog post. "As a result, we're hosting it on Google News."" 
9. ^ "Original stories, from the source.". Google. http://googlenewsblog.blogspot.com/2007/08/original-stories-from-source.html. Retrieved April 26, 2008. "Today we’re launching a new feature on Google News that will help you quickly and easily find original stories from news publishers – including stories from some of the top news agencies in the world, such as the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, UK Press Association and the Canadian Press – and go directly to the original source to read more." 
10. ^ Pepitone, Julianne (January 11, 2010). "Google News stops hosting AP stories". CNN. http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/11/news/companies/google_associated_press/. Retrieved January 12, 2010. "Google News has stopped hosting new articles from the Associated Press the search giant confirmed Monday, in a sign that contract negotiations between the two companies may have broken down." 
11. ^ "Bad news for Google in Belgium.". International Herald Tribune. September 22, 2006. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/22/business/google.php. Retrieved September 25, 2007. "The earlier decision required Google to stop displaying extracts of French and German-language articles from Belgian newspapers."  The majority Dutch-language press is fully included in Google News
12. ^ "Bringing history online, one newspaper at a time". Google. September 8, 2008. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/bringing-history-online-one-newspaper.html. Retrieved September 8, 2008. "Today, we're launching an initiative to make more old newspapers accessible and searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives." 
13. ^ http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/news/label?lid=06c20bed07a04da6&hl=en
14. ^ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/20/google_ends_newspaper_scanning_project/
15. ^ "Google Ending Newspaper Archiving Project". PC Magazine. May 20, 2011. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2385664,00.asp. Retrieved 2011-05-20. 
16. ^ http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/news/thread?tid=11abf9e92882b59f&hl=en&fid=11abf9e92882b59f0004aafec50a9040
17. ^ ^{a b} Helft, Miguel (September 15, 2008). "How a Series of Mistakes Hurt Shares of United". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/technology/15google.html. Retrieved September 15, 2008. 
18. ^ http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/10/first-click-free-for-web-search.html
19. ^ Morrison, Scott (December 2, 2009). "Google To Let News Groups Set Reader Limits". The Australian. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/google-to-let-news-groups-set-reader-limits/story-e6frg996-1225805985859. Retrieved April 2, 2010. 
20. ^ Matt McGee, "It's Official: Wikipedia Is a Google News Source," Search Engine Land, June 22, 2009

External links

• Google News website
• Google News Archive Search
• Google News Rss Feeds
• Official Google Blog: And Now, News
• ReadAndPost.com is an RSS Feed Aggregator built from Google News Feeds
• Newsknife.com rates news sites + journalists based on their appearances at Google News