Google News
Encyclopedia
Google News is a free news aggregator provided by Google
Inc, selecting recent items from thousands of publications by an automatic aggregation algorithm.
Launched in September 2002, the service was tagged as a beta test for over three years until January 2006.
The initial idea was developed by Krishna Bharat,
, Czech
, Dutch
, English
, French
, German
, Greek
, Hebrew
, Hindi, Hungarian
, Italian
, Japanese
, Korean
, Malayalam, Norwegian
, Polish
, Portuguese
, Russian
, Spanish
, Swedish
, Tamil
, Telugu
and Turkish
.
The service covers news articles appearing within the past 30 days on various news websites. In total, Google News aggregates content from more than 25,000 publishers. For the English language it covers about 4,500 sites; for other languages, fewer. 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.
The layout of Google News underwent a major revision on May 16, 2011.
On July 14, 2011, Google introduced "Google News Badges" and split up the Sci/Tech section into 2 sections: Science and Technology.
National Vanguard magazine, and the resulting controversy prompted Google News to remove the site from its service. In another case, Google was criticized for not including sources that 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."
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 2007. In 2007 Google announced it was paying for Associated Press content displayed in Google News, however the articles are not permanently archived. That arrangement ceased on December 23, 2009 when Google News ceased carrying Associated Press content.
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 used to be able to customize the displayed sections, their location on the page, and how many stories are visible with a JavaScript
-based drag and drop interface. However, for the US site, this has been disabled in favor of a new layout; roll-out of this layout is planned for other locales in the near future. 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).
An expansion of the service was announced on September 8, 2008, when Google News began to offer indexed content from scanned newspapers. The depth of chronological coverage varies; beginning in 2008, the entire content of the New York Times back to its founding in 1851 has been available.
In early 2010, Google removed direct access to the archive search from the main Google News page, advanced news search page and default search results pages. These pages indicated that the search covered "Any time", but did not include the archive and only included recent news. This feature had previously been available by clicking "All dates", but after the change could only be found by clicking through the advanced search page to the Archive Search page.
During the summer of 2010 Google decided to redesign the format of the Google news page creating a firestorm of complaints.
In May 2011, Google cancelled plans to scan further old newspapers. About 60 million newspaper pages had been scanned prior to this event. Google announced that it would instead focus on "Google One Pass
, a platform that enables publishers to sell content and subscriptions directly from their own sites."
In August 2011, the "News Archive Advanced Search" functionality was removed entirely, again generating complaints from regular users who found that the changes rendered the service unusable. Archival newspaper articles could still be accessed via the Google News Search page, but key functionalites such as the timeline view and ability to specify more than 10 results per page were removed.
, which was the subject of an indexed, archived article, lost and later not quite regained USD 1 billion in market value when a 2002 Chicago Tribune
article about the bankruptcy filing of the airline in that year appeared in the current "most viewed" category on the website of the Sun-Sentinel, a sister paper. Google News index's next pass found the link as new news, and Income Security Advisors found the Google result to be new news, which was passed along to Bloomberg News where it was briefly a current headline and very widely viewed.
The actual list of sources is not known outside of Google. 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 Google's news sources, as in the chart below.
Wikipedia was a Google news source for a period of time in 2009.
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
Inc, selecting recent items from thousands of publications by an automatic aggregation algorithm.
Launched in September 2002, the service was tagged as a beta test for over three years until January 2006.
The initial idea was developed by Krishna Bharat,
Technical specifications
Introduced as a beta release in March 2002, the Google News service came out of beta on January 23, 2006. Different versions of the aggregator are available for more than 40 regions in 19 languages (as of July 31, 2008), with continuing development ongoing. Currently, service in the following languages is offered: Arabic, ChineseChinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
, Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
, Hindi, Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
, Korean
Korean language
Korean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
, Malayalam, Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
, Tamil
Tamil language
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinent. It has official status in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Tamil is also an official language of Sri Lanka and Singapore...
, Telugu
Telugu language
Telugu is a Central Dravidian language primarily spoken in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India, where it is an official language. It is also spoken in the neighbouring states of Chattisgarh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa and Tamil Nadu...
and Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
.
The service covers news articles appearing within the past 30 days on various news websites. In total, Google News aggregates content from more than 25,000 publishers. For the English language it covers about 4,500 sites; for other languages, fewer. 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.
The layout of Google News underwent a major revision on May 16, 2011.
On July 14, 2011, Google introduced "Google News Badges" and split up the Sci/Tech section into 2 sections: Science and Technology.
Article selection
In March 2005 attention was called to Google's inclusion of the white supremacistWhite supremacy
White supremacy is the belief, and promotion of the belief, that white people are superior to people of other racial backgrounds. The term is sometimes used specifically to describe a political ideology that advocates the social and political dominance by whites.White supremacy, as with racial...
National Vanguard magazine, and the resulting controversy prompted Google News to remove the site from its service. In another case, Google was criticized for not including sources that 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."
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."http://www.resourceshelf.com/legaldocs/afpvgoogle1.pdf http://news.dcealumni.com/376/20305-googles-news-sued-for-infringing-agence-france-presse-copyrighted-work/ It was also alleged that Google ignored a cease and desistCease and desist
A cease and desist is an order or request to halt an activity and not to take it up again later or else face legal action. The recipient of the cease-and-desist may be an individual or an organization....
order, though Google counters that it has opt-out procedures which AFP could have followed but did not. Google now hosts Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse is a French news agency, the oldest one in the world, and one of the three largest with Associated Press and Reuters. It is also the largest French news agency. Currently, its CEO is Emmanuel Hoog and its news director Philippe Massonnet...
news, as well as the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
, Press Association
Press Association
The Press Association is the national news agency of the United Kingdom and Ireland, supplying multimedia news content to almost all national and regional newspapers, television and radio news, as well as many websites with text, pictures, video and data content globally...
and the Canadian Press
Canadian Press
Canadian Press Enterprises Inc. is the entity which "will take over the operations of the Canadian Press" according to a November 26, 2010 article in the Toronto Star...
. This arrangement started in August 2007. In 2007 Google announced it was paying for Associated Press content displayed in Google News, however the articles are not permanently archived. That arrangement ceased on December 23, 2009 when Google News ceased carrying Associated Press content.
Belgium opposition
In 2007, a Belgian court ruled that Google did not have the right to display the lead paragraph from French-language Belgian news sources when Google aggregated news stories.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
RSS (file format)
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format...
and Atom
Atom (standard)
The name Atom applies to a pair of related standards. The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources.Web feeds allow software programs to check for updates published on a...
feeds.
Users used to be able to customize the displayed sections, their location on the page, and how many stories are visible with a JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
-based drag and drop interface. However, for the US site, this has been disabled in favor of a new layout; roll-out of this layout is planned for other locales in the near future. Stories from different editions of Google News can be combined to form one personalized page, with the options stored in a cookie
HTTP cookie
A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is used for an origin website to send state information to a user's browser and for the browser to return the state information to the origin site...
. 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
On June 6, 2006, Google News expanded, adding a News Archive Search feature, offering users historical archives going back more than 200 years from some of its sources. There was a timeline view available, to select news from various years.An expansion of the service was announced on September 8, 2008, when Google News began to offer indexed content from scanned newspapers. The depth of chronological coverage varies; beginning in 2008, the entire content of the New York Times back to its founding in 1851 has been available.
In early 2010, Google removed direct access to the archive search from the main Google News page, advanced news search page and default search results pages. These pages indicated that the search covered "Any time", but did not include the archive and only included recent news. This feature had previously been available by clicking "All dates", but after the change could only be found by clicking through the advanced search page to the Archive Search page.
During the summer of 2010 Google decided to redesign the format of the Google news page creating a firestorm of complaints.
In May 2011, Google cancelled plans to scan further old newspapers. About 60 million newspaper pages had been scanned prior to this event. Google announced that it would instead focus on "Google One Pass
Google One Pass
Google One Pass is an online store developed by Google for publishers looking to sell subscriptions to their content. Similar to the Android Market, where "apps" are sold to users via their Android mobile devices, One Pass offers the ability for publishers of any size, from large mainstream media...
, a platform that enables publishers to sell content and subscriptions directly from their own sites."
In August 2011, the "News Archive Advanced Search" functionality was removed entirely, again generating complaints from regular users who found that the changes rendered the service unusable. Archival newspaper articles could still be accessed via the Google News Search page, but key functionalites such as the timeline view and ability to specify more than 10 results per page were removed.
Coverage artifacts
On September 7, 2008, United AirlinesUnited Airlines
United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees United Air Lines, Inc., is the world's largest airline with 86,852 employees (which includes the entire holding company United Continental...
, which was the subject of an indexed, archived article, lost and later not quite regained USD 1 billion in market value when a 2002 Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
article about the bankruptcy filing of the airline in that year appeared in the current "most viewed" category on the website of the Sun-Sentinel, a sister paper. Google News index's next pass found the link as new news, and Income Security Advisors found the Google result to be new news, which was passed along to Bloomberg News where it was briefly a current headline and very widely viewed.
First click free
On December 1, 2009 Google announced changes to their "first click free" program which is running since 2008 and allows users to find and read articles behind a paywall. The reader's first click to the content is free, and the number after that would be set by the content provider.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. 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 Google's news sources, as in the chart below.
Wikipedia was a Google news source for a period of time in 2009.
Example list of sources for English edition, as of May 2007
The site Google News Report monitors the Google News homepage, and for May 2007, published this list of the top 26 sites most-often referenced by Google News.| Rank | News Source |
|---|---|
| 1 | The New York Times The New York Times The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization... |
| 2 | The Washington Post The Washington Post The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation... |
| 3 | Houston Chronicle Houston Chronicle The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Texas, USA, headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building in Downtown Houston. , it is the ninth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States... |
| 4 | Bloomberg L.P. Bloomberg L.P. Bloomberg L.P. is an American privately held financial software, media, and data company. Bloomberg makes up one third of the $16 billion global financial data market with estimated revenue of $6.9 billion. Bloomberg L.P... |
| 5 | Los Angeles Times Los Angeles Times The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country.... |
| 6 | Reuters Reuters Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data... |
| 7 | Forbes Forbes Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week... |
| 8 | Monsters and Critics.com |
| 9 | guardian.co.uk Guardian.co.uk guardian.co.uk, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited, is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. Georgina Henry is the editor... |
| 10 | Voice of America Voice of America Voice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio... |
| 11 | International Herald Tribune International Herald Tribune The International Herald Tribune is a widely read English language international newspaper. It combines the resources of its own correspondents with those of The New York Times and is printed at 38 sites throughout the world, for sale in more than 160 countries and territories... |
| 12 | Boston Globe |
| 13 | Chicago Tribune Chicago Tribune The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is... |
| 14 | BBC News BBC News BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online... |
| 15 | San Francisco Chronicle San Francisco Chronicle thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,... |
| 16 | CBS News CBS News CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main... |
| 17 | Times Online |
| 18 | Xinhua |
| 19 | Wall Street Journal |
| 20 | USA Today USA Today USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003... |
| 21 | Fox News |
| 22 | CNN CNN Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States... |
| 23 | Seattle Post Intelligencer |
| 24 | MSNBC MSNBC MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada... |
| 25 | ABC News ABC News ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company... |
| 25 | Daily Mail and Mail On Sunday Daily Mail The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982... |
| 26 | The Times of India The Times of India The Times of India is an Indian English-language daily newspaper. TOI has the largest circulation among all English-language newspaper in the world, across all formats . It is owned and managed by Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd... |
See also
- Ask BigNewsAsk BigNewsAsk BigNews is an automated internet-based news aggregator and search engine provided by Ask.com on February 6th, 2008. News are retrieved from more than 10.000 sources and automatically grouped into stories; for each story a BigPicture page is produced, offering an overall view of all pertaining...
- BigNews.bizBigNews.bizBigNews.biz is a free online news and press release distribution service. The company was founded in 2004 and is a registered LLC based in Garden City, New York...
- Google Fast FlipGoogle Fast FlipGoogle Fast Flip was an online news aggregator from Google Inc. that mimicked the experience of flicking through a newspaper or magazine, allowing visual search of stories in manner similar to microfiche...
- Google searchGoogle searchGoogle or Google Web Search is a web search engine owned by Google Inc. Google Search is the most-used search engine on the World Wide Web, receiving several hundred million queries each day through its various services....
- List of Google services and tools
- Yahoo! NewsYahoo! NewsYahoo! News is an Internet-based news aggregator provided by Yahoo!. It features Top Stories, U.S. National, World, Business, Entertainment, Science, Health, Weather, Most Popular, News Photos, Op/Ed, and Local news....