I remember going down to see Eric early in the process of reporting the book, when Google News was just starting. He asked me how I liked the new service, and I said it was cool, but my chief complaint was that it had no memory – it was all about the present, and you could not slice the news by date.
Looks like Google is finally addressing that issue with the release today of an archive version of Google News, created in cooperation with major news outlets like the Post and Times, and folks like Lexis Nexis. This announcement strikes me as consistent with a new tone at Google with regard to media companies – “we’re your partner, we’ll help you make money.”
I’m looking forward to using this. WSJ has a public story on this. From it:
Google News Archive Search includes articles that have been difficult or impossible for users to find through search engines. Google’s regular news service, for example, includes content only from the previous 30 days. Consumers can access some archival news databases free online through libraries, but not everyone is aware of how to do that.
Google declined to say how many content owners were included or exactly how many articles would be available.
I still wish for a real archive of Google News as it stands today, but this is a start.
Great, though I’m glad I’m not in the print news biz.
Will this approach prevail – where Google helps distribute major outlet stories? Or Newsvine’s extensive user input and stories? Can individual papers survive as online efficiencies bring the cost to produce good, eyewitness expert stories to near zero?
It is amazing that this story isn’t getting that much play. This is by far the most compelling product enhancement that Google has done in a long while. Build the index; help me find things.
Compare with the story you ran Sept. 4: Tom Mohr calling for the news industry to develop a shared platform.
Now consider an alternate universe where the following happened: New York Times, WSJ, Wash Post, Time-Warner, and the rest get together and build a shared archive that’s searchable from any of the participating websites. They would share the revenues from the search ads and any other monetization, except for sale of content, which would go to the original content provider, when users buy an article.
In the alternate universe, the news sites would make money from search and would build mindshare as a starting point for research. But in the real universe, these benefits now go to Google. Yes, the news sites may sell a few more one-shot article pageviews, but their positioning has been downgraded once again, because they would rather work with their strategic (long-term) competitor than with their tactical (day-to-day) competitors.
Good job, Google. Bad job, NYT, WSJ, etc.
After testing Google’s News Archive Search Service the results are fantastic and very thorough. I have posted a couple example results at: http://techaddress.wordpress.com/2006/09/06/google-launches-news-archive-search-service
Congratulations Google!
Jakob – great panel at SES.
I’ve worked closely with many in the news industry (five years in the online news business) and you’re absolutely right. It comes down to a short vs long decision.
In the short-term, some news sites get 20-30% of traffic from aggregators like Google News and are happy to take it. But long term they’re training users to go to Google for their news needs.
This is more interesting from a business point of view than a technological point of view as the content providers have provided Google with more comprehensive information access than Yahoo!’s Subscription Search launched in 2005.