Google News: Difference between revisions

Content deleted Content added

Inline

Revision as of 10:29, 16 November 2007

Google News is an automated news aggregator provided by Google Inc. The initial idea, StoryRank - related to Google's PageRank formula, was developed by Krishna Bharat in 2001, the Principal Research Scientist of Google. Google News quietly left beta in January 2006.[1]

Technical Specifications

Introduced as a beta release in April 2002, the Google News service came out of beta on 23 January 2006. Different versions of the aggregator are available for more than 20 regions in 12 languages, with continuing development ongoing. Currently, service in the following languages is offered: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese (traditional and simplified characters), Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Arabic, Hebrew, Norwegian and Swedish.

The service covers news articles appearing within the past 30 days on various news websites. For the English language it covers about 4,500 sites^{[citation needed]}; for other languages, less. 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.^{[citation needed]} Some online projects [2] provide continuous multi-document summarization of stories originally clustered by the Google News.

Article selection

To quell any charges of reporting bias, Google claims that the service is fully "automated" with no human editors. However, the sources included are determined by human review^{[citation needed]}, and the removal of stories from the service has been criticized.^{[citation needed]}. In 2003, Google News' inclusion of Indymedia news sources drew fire after an anti-semitic posting was included with Indymedia's syndicated articles. Google received complaints, and decided to remove all Indymedia postings, claiming the website had insufficient editorial controls to justify its inclusion as a news source.^{[citation needed]} Google News now includes a limited number of its postings.

In March 2005 attention was called to Google's inclusion of the white supremacist 'National Vanguard' magazine, and the resulting controversy forced Google News to remove the site from its service. In another case, Google was criticized for not including sources which 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." Google now places specific [[IP Address]es from China on a blacklist and prevents them from being indexed.^{[citation needed]}

Some have accused the site of favoring relatively unknown news aggregators who are also sponsors of Google News^{[citation needed]}, stating that inclusion of sites such as Playfuls.com who appear to be clients of Google Ads^{[citation needed]} may represent a conflict of interest.

Legality

Agence France Presse

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."[3] [4] 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 has since began to host news from agencies such as the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse, Press Association and the Canadian Press in August 2007.[5]

Belgium

In 2007 a court in Belgium ruled that Google did not have the right to display the lead paragraph from Belgian news sources when Google aggregated news stories. ^[1]

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 can customize the displayed sections, their location on the page, and how many stories are visible with a JavaScript-based drag and drop interface. 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

As of June 6, 2006, Google News expanded, adding a News Archive Search feature, offering users historical archives going back more than 200 years from which to peruse. There is also a timeline view, to browse news from various years.

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, but such a list would go far in helping to judge how well Google News works toward its purpose of helping make the world's information accessible. 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 what news sources Google picks from.

Example List of Sources, as of May '07

The site Google News Report monitors the Google News homepage, and for May 2007, published this list of the top 25 sites most-often referenced by Google News:

Rank	News Source
1	The New York Times
2	Washington Post
3	Houston Chronicle
4	Bloomberg L.P.
5	Los Angeles Times
6	Reuters
7	Forbes
8	Monsters and Critics.com
9	Guardian Unlimited
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

References

^ "Bad news for Google in Belgium". International Herald Tribune. September 22, 2006. Retrieved 2007-09-25. A judge rejected Google's argument that the original decision had been so widely reported that posting it on google.be and the associated Google News site was unnecessary and "disproportionate." The earlier decision required Google to stop displaying extracts of French and German-language articles from Belgian newspapers. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

External links

[1] "Bad news for Google in Belgium". International Herald Tribune. September 22, 2006. Retrieved 2007-09-25. A judge rejected Google's argument that the original decision had been so widely reported that posting it on google.be and the associated Google News site was unnecessary and "disproportionate." The earlier decision required Google to stop displaying extracts of French and German-language articles from Belgian newspapers. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

[1]

@@ Line 2: / Line 2: @@
 [[Image:Google_news_logo.gif|right]]
-'''Google News''' is an automated [[news aggregator]] provided by [[Google]] Inc. The initial idea, StoryRank - related to Goole's [[PageRank]] formula, was developed by [[Krishna Bharat]] in 2001, the Principal Research Scientist of Google.  Google News quietly left beta in January 2006.[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/01/and-now-news.html]
+'''Google News''' is an automated [[news aggregator]] provided by [[Google]] Inc. The initial idea, StoryRank - related to Google's [[PageRank]] formula, was developed by [[Krishna Bharat]] in 2001, the Principal Research Scientist of Google.  Google News quietly left beta in January 2006.[http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/01/and-now-news.html]
 ==Technical Specifications==