Google Does the News 330
rizen was among the countless readers who submitted that google does the news. They've added a new tab to their interface, and a CNNish sorta web page that indexes thousands of online news sites. Their technology section is showing some Slashdot stories too (sweet!). I like that they combine related stories on the same subject.
Nifty setup.
Why do slashdot stories? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't see why they would. They probably already posted the article Slashdot is linking to before slashdot posts the story.
Slashdot isn't a news site as much as a community site. Most articles are just pointing to real news sites. Its the comments that gives this site the edge.
No Reg. Required on NYTimes stories (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/21/technology/21
I assume it's the partner=google part that bypasses the registration
Re:No Reg. Required on NYTimes stories (Score:2)
I also imagine it costs mass money.
Re:Why do slashdot stories? (Score:2)
The other is a secondary link about AMD Opteron supporting Palladium [slashdot.org], which links to the /. yro discussion, which I figure is a legitimate source of information about the subject. The main link, though, goes to a story at The Inquirer [theinquirer.net].
I don't see a problem with this.
What About.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What About.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What About.. (Score:2)
BTW, this is a repeat on Slashdot. I've been checking out Google News since the first time is was posted here as a Beta.
Ooo, irony (Score:5, Funny)
Sweetness and light... (Score:5, Insightful)
Still, I wonder how the other news sources are going to react. They make their revenue on advertisting and if Google is skimming off the top of their viewership, I have to wonder if they're not going to start kvetching pretty quickly.
Re:Sweetness and light... (Score:5, Insightful)
Q.
Re:Sweetness and light... (Score:2, Interesting)
When I clicked the link for a story that was from NYT it came up w/&PARTNER=GOOGLE in the headline (or something similar). Seems that b/c they have been linking to them before it isn't a problem, or they have new permission to do this?
Re:Sweetness and light... (Score:4, Informative)
There has already been quite [journalism.co.uk] a lot [wired.com] of controversy [searchenginewatch.com] regarding deep links, dating all the way back to 1999 [salon.com].
In fact, one major free website hosting company, whose name escapes me at the moment, does not allow you to deep link to their members' pages. Instead, you are forced to go to that member's home page first (I imagine that they are checking for referers or some such thing).
Clearly, deep linking is beneficial [useit.com], but some companies just don't get it.
Re:Sweetness and light... (Score:5, Informative)
If companies want to force viewers through a predetermined path, the web is simply the wrong medium.
Re:Sweetness and light... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sweetness and light... (Score:2)
Granted, 99% of the time this method wold work, but it's not foolproof. I never use that method for tracking clickthroughs or for a serious method of security.
Wanted! Clued in management. (Score:2)
Or (if they really wanted to screw with the 1% who know or care how to forge a http-header) they could have pseudo-random url:s that change every hour or so.
If I ever saw a problem that needed a technical, not, I repeat NOT a legal solution, this is it.
Why the hell sue people when you can easily stop them from "infringing" (or whatever they call it).
Or they could just wise up and see "deep linking" for what it really is. A benefit to everyone involved.
If you don't allow deep linking your site will become a hassle to use, and large numbers of your customers will probably go elsewhere in search for a more user friendly experience.
Of course, any of the above would require those companies policy making wonks to have any clue at all.
Sadly, tech savvy people in management is all too rare.
I just wish they could stopped being so anal.
To sum up: Foot, meet bullet.
Re:Sweetness and light... (Score:2, Informative)
I've read a lot of stuff about people thinking that using HTTP_REFER is a good idea to lock people out of deep links. HTTP_REFER is NOT required. It is simpley a nice idea provided by the browser. A better solution is this: Only allow setting of a session variable (on the server) at the main page of the site. Then, require that the session variable be set at the pages that require access. This can be done transparently on the server. It also prevents the "I'm a cool hacker, I can fool you into thinking I am from your site." It can all be handled server side, which is good since if you are hosting news on the web, you are most likely running a server! This is purely a technical solution.
Not, why the hell you want people sludging around your site looking for an interesting article and why you think this improves your site, that is a mental problem for the site. If I cannot link directly into a site to the information I want, I don't go to the site.
Re:Sweetness and light... (Score:3, Insightful)
robots.txt (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sweetness and light... (Score:3, Funny)
RP
Re:Sweetness and light... (Score:3, Informative)
Slashdot need to license this! (Score:5, Funny)
Regions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Regions (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Regions (Score:4, Funny)
(that was a joke).
Re:Regions (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Regions (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with you. I think this would be a very nice addition to the site. You should suggest that to them.
In the meantime, you want World News Review [worldnewsreview.com].
Re:Regions (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Regions (Score:2)
Re:Regions (Score:2)
Reminds me... (Score:2)
Here's why that won't happen :)
http://www.satirewire.com/news/0010/internationalRe:Should go global eventually (Score:2)
I you were talking CNN, well, that would be another story, since CNN is clearly advertised as a provider of news for the US public, however channels that intend to be watched internationally (like BBC News) are always careful about their coverage so as not to alienate their viewers.
Clean look and good international support (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Clean look and good international support (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously though, I wonder just how the IRNA one paragraph story got to be number two on the list of sources.
B.T.W., and this is probably redundant, but if you think slashdotting is cool, wait till google news points at your community newspaper.
Methodology? (Score:5, Interesting)
About News Search (Score:5, Informative)
The most it says about the technology is this: I'm guessing that the sources themselves are ranked in the usual manner. The same story from different sources are grouped and finally the placement of the story is determined by how many sources (weighted by their rank) ran it and how those sources positioned it themselves.
the best part (Score:5, Funny)
Re:the best part (Score:2, Interesting)
Strange how it didn't have much on the Premiership or other football though. I guess the ICC Champions Trophy [of cricket] is getting more coverage than whatever football there is.
Of course, Slashdot stories... (Score:2)
Meta (Score:5, Funny)
Well done... (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a long overdue feature....its automatic, robust, and I've often wanted to read another take on the same issue when I've read a news article. I hope that they have it set up to filter out all the repeated AP articles that are on 2 zillion different websites. But I'm guessing they did, it would just be similar to filering out similar results in general searches.
Re:Well done... (Score:2)
The story... (Score:2)
The news page is nice, but the big thing is that google now searches "4,000 publications around the world. Previously, the site had searched 150 publications every hour."
Maybe now, Google execs won't have to publicly admit that All the Web [alltheweb.com] ha[d] a better news search.
Re:The story... (Score:2)
Just to clarify. Google execs previously did admit that All the web ha[d] a better news search. It was updated far more often and had more sources. (They called it BETA for a reason). Now they are building it up.
I wouldn't mind users being able to moderate stories on Slashdot so we could filter out the worst of the boring stuff they put on the front page.
People watch Survivor. Don't take it for granted that what you like, Slashdot as a collective group likes.
Hang on a second... (Score:3, Funny)
What if Google links to this story? Then you get the Slashdot slashdotting Google, who will slashdot Slashdot, who will bounce it to Google, who will bounce it back to Slashdot, who will retur*Runtime error: Endless recursive loop encountered, stack overflow. Brain dump follows.*
Heh. Bandwidth firefights - this oughta be cool. Nifty setup indeed!
Soko
Re:Hang on a second... (Score:2, Informative)
Only took them 15 minutes or so to find the story too.
Re:Hang on a second... (Score:4, Funny)
Heh. Bandwidth firefights - this oughta be cool.
Bandwidth firefights? With Google? That sounds like playing tug-of-war with a locomotive.
Re:Hang on a second... (Score:2)
Brownie points if you can mirror the Google mirror (Score:5, Funny)
I just want to see a google archive of this:
http://www.alltooflat.com/geeky/elgoog/ [alltooflat.com]
Not New (Score:2)
It's important to remember that they don't actully report any news, they just link to it. (Kinda like slashdot.) You will still read the stories on the provider's website. This makes it not the greatest place to get breaking news and personally don't allways trust AP. (Though they do link to several other news site for each story.)
The is a whole bunch of google "beta" sites. I know they have a catalog section and I think they have a few other more interesting sections.
Re:Not New (Score:2)
How Aggregating ! (Score:2)
Of course, my thought is considering the lengths Google goes to to thwart scrapes and scripts, I doubt such a tool is possible.
Been beta for a while (Score:5, Informative)
Just a suggestion (Score:3, Insightful)
Nope, no good.. (Score:4, Funny)
Connection failed.
It's been Around for a While (Score:5, Informative)
I'm surprised nobody seems to have known this , but Google has been offering news searches for something like the past six months, at news.google.com. The only things that have changed are now there's a tag on Google's front page, and the front news page now features an attractive layout and contains graphics from stories.
Google's primary news-search feature has been available for I think well over six months. I've been using Google news as my primary news searcher ever since it came out. On its first day, I spent an hour or so comparing it to yahoo's news search engine [yahoo.com], and I found Google's search was way better. I especially like that, when you do a news search, you can choose between having returned items listed according to relevancy or according to date. When you sort by date for any kind of common news story, you can often find great items that have been published within the past hour.
Two more things of interest. First, even though the news search is now available on google's front page, the site still says that the engine is in beta. Second, the reason I found out about Google's news engine right when it came out is I frequently visit researchbuzz.com [researchbuzz.com], which always seems to have the scoop on the latest internet search technologies.
Re:It's been Around for a While (Score:2)
Re:It's been Around for a While (Score:2)
I don't like it (Score:3, Insightful)
I am worried that google will loose focus on the primary reason that people go there, and the search service will suffer because of it. Fair enough that the service will be usefull, but when you're on top you need to work twice as hard on your primary product to stay there.
----
omg it's wallpaper australia [wallpaperscoverings.com]!
Re:I don't like it (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, I don't think they've gone all out and created a portal (at least in comparison to what's out there). What really struck me was that they had almost no graphics and pure content. Portals, in themselves, are not bad; I just think many people have done them bad.
Lastly, I don't think they are really working twice as hard on this. It just seems like a way to extend their user base and grow. If they just stayed with a search engine that would mean a lot less expansion of the company (and companies usually always need to expand and re-invent themselves to stay in the game).
Congrats Google!
Re:I don't like it (Score:2)
Google News provides the same clean UI to news sources that we've all come to treasure for Google's web search. Occasionally I look at Google Headlines [slashdot.org], but more often I go directly to Google News Search [slashdot.org] I've been wishing for a long time that Google would provide a search of news sources. I've lived overseas (Asia, Africa) about half the time in the last 15 years and have found it extremely difficult to get news about places I care about. Google news has changed that. I just typed in the name of the small resort town where I lived in Northern India and found 14 stories from 9 sources. That's the power of Google!!
Sorry about the links (Score:2)
Google Headlines [google.com]
Google News Search [google.com]
Re:I don't like it (Score:2)
This just provides me another way to find information
google.com is still a page with a few very small images and a input field, this jsut allows me to use do more if it will be usefull.
Re:I don't like it (Score:2)
It's also been reported here that google has enough computing power that even when they were hit the hardest after 9/11/01, they only pegged ~60% of their computers, so I don't think news/portal-like services are going to slow down the searches.
Also, they're still *so* far above anyone elses searches at this point, that they can dawdle on really useful tools like this. The tortoise isn't even awake yet...the hare has time to play.
Historical article... (Score:4, Interesting)
Google searches for the news [com.com]
ZDNet- 1hourago
Google unveiled on Monday an expanded test version of its search engine for current events and news, the latest step in the company's move into new markets.
Google Launches News Service [pcworld.com]PCWorld
Google launches news search site [paper.nl]TelecomPaper(subscription)
CNET [com.com]- and5related [slashdot.org]
So what do I need slashdot for anymore? (Score:2)
News at Google (Score:2, Informative)
Also available, and still in beta, is the Catalog site [google.com], which provides photo versions of actual printed catalogs, including my favorite [google.com]. (Radio Shack)
Google is truly breaking new ground..
read on the bottom... (Score:5, Funny)
I was just saying... (Score:5, Funny)
And then this came out. I got to point and say, "See, this is why!" Then I ran around the room in my underwear laughing maniacally. I think I'm sleeping on the couch tonight.
How are sites selected for each story? (Score:5, Interesting)
From Google's "About Google News [google.com]" link:
This is an interesting development for Google. Ruling out the possibility of paid placement (for now), it seems as though PageRank [google.com] doesn't apply to the news aggregator. (And how would it? Stories are updated continuously.) It's not likely to be completely random, either, although such an approach could lead to some very interesting story angles.
Re:How are sites selected for each story? (Score:2)
First of all, I think they only spider a select list of news sites. What they probably do is assign each site a weight based on page rank. If more highly-ranked sources run a story on a given topic, it gets to the top. They probably had to hack together an aging aspect, as well.
Just in case ... (Score:5, Funny)
Mozilla Crashing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Mozilla Crashing (Score:2)
Anyway, the page that gave yours fits works okay in Mozilla 0.99 (the version I happen to have on this Win98 machine), but I've also noticed this 0.99 build isn't nearly as crash-prone as v1.0 from May, which I have on my other (Win95) machine. That v1.0 throws up so much it's unusuable (it's the ONLY app EVER to BSOD that machine).
I normally use Netscape 3.04 by *preference* (images and js off), and I have to say that in NS3.04, news.google.com renders really fast and the results are 100% legible. I don't normally visit headline portals because most are so friggin' slow and display like crap, but this one may change my habits.
Re:Mozilla Crashing (Score:2)
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.1) Gecko/20020826
Re:Mozilla Crashing (Score:2)
Um, try to get my boss to allow us to install Linux on our work machines?
Internet Explorer renders it just fine.
Re:Mozilla Crashing (Score:2)
beta (Score:2)
How long until... (Score:2)
(This is pretty nifty. Beats flipping through several sites, or as other posters have said, waiting for banners to load on cnn.com. Now if they offer it a couple of other languages, my life will be complete.)
Sneak preview of upcoming Googlage (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sneak preview of upcoming Googlage (Score:4, Interesting)
Google Labs... another reason why I think Google is probably the best technology company on the face of the planet right now...
Re:Sneak preview of upcoming Googlage (Score:2)
Put in "fuck" and you get quite a few links to correct definitions and synonyms. But these [vhforums.com] links [ageofconsent.com] take you to pages that define it incorrectly as "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" as we know by this page [snopes.com] among others.
Google will give you links to anything you want on the web that it knows of...but you can't trust everything you read on the web...so using Google as a reference book is not the best way to go until they can provide some sort of knowledge filter or something similar to the PageRank system for qualifying certain links over others.
For the doubters who say "well, how can you trust snopes over VanHalen Links to be correct?"...Snopes references their information better.
great.. (Score:2)
Magic? (Score:2)
ABC News - 5 minutes ago
Yet...
Auto-generated 13 minutes ago
Anyone care to explain?
Re:Magic? (Score:2)
Slashgoo (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Slashgoo (Score:2)
PDHoss
Re:Slashgoo (Score:3, Funny)
DANGER! Google is sucking us in! (Score:2, Interesting)
And then they start charging. Or they start advertising. Or they start offering paid placements.
Beware the free service.
Cool Tech (Score:2)
The new site will be popular and profitable. But what will really line Google's pockets is licensing this technology to content provider and builders of intranet portals.
Hm (Score:3, Informative)
In case you didn't know, you can see all the latest stuff Google is working on here [google.com].
Check it out.
This is just a news aggregator (Score:2)
Probably the best thing I like about Memigo is what they call peer ratings of news stories [memigo.com]. This allows you to see stories your peers also liked. You can view news chronologically, or by top rated stories (by day or by week).
They've got other features I don't really use - private messaging, for example. They also allow you to define a group of "peers" - other folks that along with you rate stories (like minds, I guess).
Your channels content then, is defined by this peer grouping. Sorta interesting.
They still seem to be in a "start up" mode; by that I mean lots of news is sourced off Yahoo!, and a few other services. Haven't seen any NY Times or CNN stuff in their feeds so far (might be wrong though).
Anyhow, considering how much Google adapts and changes, it wouldn't surprise me at all if they incorporate some of these features into their news tab shortly.
It's been there (Score:2)
Apparently it was an open test.
Exellent! But.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Figures (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been aware of the Beta for some time. The search feature has been great, but the portal left much to be desired. It was basically a cluttered list of five sources for each news story. This new layout seems better, though it still leaves me wondering which stories are supposed to be the most newsworthy. And I see a fundamental problem with Google's approach.
Taking a cross section of all the news that's out there is not going to result in good coverage. One of the big differences between a good newspaper, like The New York Times, and a poor one, like The New York Daily News, is the collection of stories the editors choose. The Daily News needs to get its readers fired up to sell papers, so it covers the most provocative stories it can find and sensationalizes them. The Times has the luxury of knowing its readers trust it to inform them of the most important news.
I know it sounds like an elitist position -- "we know what's best for you." I was once accosted at a party by a USA Today employee who began ranting about how arrogant it was of my paper to assume people wanted to read about human rights abuses in Africa. I asked him what we should be featuring and he detailed a series of articles his paper ran on business travellers who get laid by stewardesses at 30,000 feet. I didn't argue with him, but I felt somewhat more confident that we were choosing the right stories.
If Google covers the news based on what's out there (which is primarily of the USA Today variety), as opposed to applying news values, its offering won't be very informative. It may appeal to the largest number of people who confuse entertainment with news, but I think most Slashdotters will find it very shallow.
There's also the question of Google's "partnerships" with news sites and how that will affect the rankings.
While I still like the news search feature, I prefer the collection of shell scripts I just released. They grab the top headlines and blurbs from a number of major newspapers and put them together on one page, organized by newspaper, so you can browse "trusted" news sites quickly without having to wade through cumbersome javascript navigations, flash ads, registration. You still visit the newspapers' Web sites to read the stories that interest you, but this way you get to check out the merchandise before you commit to jumping through the content owner's hoops.
My aggregator also provides updated lists of all the headlines that have appeared on the wire services in the last several hours. The editors at the news sites are watching these same lists for updates when breaking news occurs... even the major sites that have a large number of reporters. They can't cover everything themselves, and they need to have some coverage until their reporter can get to the story.
It also covers computer news sites like Slashdot (note: the list is currently very Mac-centric because the shell scripts require Curl [curl.haxx.se] to trick servers into thinking the download program is a Web browser... I'll try to do the same with wget for Linux, but that's not ready yet), grabs sports scores, the weather report, comic strips, and fetches slippers.
If you're using Mac OS X, or you're willing to install Curl on your Linux box, give it a try. It's free and it's open source.
Re:google's great, but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
*bett er - adj Does not have insanely annoying banner ads everywhere, nor advertisements disguised as headlines, or random flash popups or interstitial ads.
Re:google's great, but.... (Score:2)
Don't you know a "feature" when you see one?
Re:google's great, but.... (Score:2, Interesting)
They already do (Score:5, Funny)
They already have one. It's called "Ask Slashdot"
I doubt it (Score:2)
Not every company has no direction or hope. It just so happens that some have a business plans which benefit both the consumer and the company.