Google News
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. No human is involved in the altering of the front page or story promotion, beyond tweaking the aggregation algorithm. Google News left beta in January 2006.
Contents
2 .Article selection
3 .News agencies
4 .Belgium opposition
5 .Features and customization
6. News Archive Search
7. Sources for news
7.1. Example list of sources, as of May 2007
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 40 regions in 19 languages (as of 31 July 2008), 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, Czech, Swedish, Greek, Russian, Hindi, Tamil and Turkish.
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 [1] provide continuous multi-document summarization of stories originally clustered by the Google News.
Article selection
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 addresses from China on a blacklist and prevents them from being indexed.[citation needed]
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."[2] [3] 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 of 2007.[2]In 2007 Google announced it was paying for Associated Press content displayed in Google News.[3][4] It is not clear if the Associated Press articles are retained in the archive, or are only available for a limited time.
Belgium opposition
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.[5]
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.[citation needed] 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 2007
The site Google News Report monitors the Google News homepage, and for May 2007, published this list of the top 27 sites most-often referenced by Google News:[citation needed]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 MSNBC25 ABC News25 Daily Mail and Mail On Sunday
