Google News Features
July 21, 2009
ReadWriteWeb’s “Google Removes Alerts, RSS Buttons from News” explains broken functions. Marshall Kirkpatriick reported:
Inbal Drukker, a senior associate at Google News, said on the first and sixth of July that there are “engineering changes” underway to “improve Google News.” So what seems like a loss today could end up for the better in the long run, but for now there seems to be a problem.
Google News has been an interesting service. I have heard a number of informed observers explain that the service is in beta and undergoing constant improvement. Another Google watcher suggested to me that Google News was a money loser because selling ads on the site would trigger a cat fight. One person who had taken advantage of a hospitality room’s “hospitality” opined that the “real alerts” were available from Indigo Stream’s GoogleAlert service.
My research suggests that Google News is an important demonstration of Google’s automatic classification, its ability to process a range of languages, and generate a meaningful, newspaper like interface. The number of sources Google processes is large, but I have not been able to obtain a specific number. Estimates vary, and Google does a thorough job.
Google News does have some major weak spots; for instance:
- News is a Google collection and updates seem to be in the two to five minute range for some stories. The problem is that real time search demands faster content processing. Google News underscores the sluggishness of the service. Run the same query on Twitter and then on Google News and judge for yourself.
- The copyright issues bubble beneath the surface of Google News. I find the lack of advertising an indication that Google is walking softly.
- The news function running in my “ig” or “individualized Google” strikes me as useful. When I log in, I find that the “news” function more relevant to my interests. Google News is hooked into to other Google services, so there is more to the service than a list of headlines, snippets, and links.
Perhaps the Google News enhancements coming will get Google in the real time search game? The issues with Google News have persisted for a couple of years. The big “right now” problem in my opinion is Google News’s lack of real time, Twitter search-type indexing. Is Google spreading itself to thin? Has Yahoo’s peanut butter problem surfaced at Google News?
Stephen Arnold, July 21, 2009
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