Google Launches News Service

Posted on September 27, 2002

Google, a popular online search engine, has launched a news service that selects headlines from over 4,000 sources based on computer algorithms. At the bottom of Google's news pages the following text appears: "This page was generated entirely by computer algorithms without human editors." Google says it employs no editors, managing editors, or executive editors to run the news service.

The headlines and stories are selected using computer algorithms, which are based on how and where the stories appear elsewhere on the web. Google News does not contain complete articles -- just short excerpts, headlines and some news photos. When a visitor clicks on one of the news headlines provided by Google they are taken directly to the article on the website which published the news story. The homepage of Google News provides some of the day's most popular news items. Google also groups together news articles about similar topics, so readers can see what different media outlets are saying about it. Visitors can also search for a specific topic, such as "west nile virus" and bring up links to news articles about the west nile virus from hundreds of local, international and national news outlets. These articles can then be sorted by relevance or by date.

Other search portals also have news services including AOL, Yahoo News, Excite News and Lycos News. Unlike Google these news services are primarily based on outsourced content and often contain full news articles, while Google just contains headline and short excerpts. Other news search services such as Moreover, outsource its news headline technology. Altavista, provides a news service which includes news headlines from Moreover. Like Moreover, outsourcing may be one way Google can use its news algorithms to bring in revenues. Other news search providers include DayPop.com, RocketNews.com, NewsIndex.com, Rocketinfo and Northern Light.