Search technology darling Google, Inc. has jumped on the weblogging
bandwagon, rolling out a new feature with third-party links to the day’s top
news stories.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, which already posts links to news
stories when returning search results, is beta testing a Google News Search, offering links from news
organizations around the world to the day’s headlines.
Google officials could not be reached Wednesday morning to discuss the
business end of Weblogging move, which points readers to news stories in
five categories: world, U.S, business, entertainment, technology and sports.
In a note on its site, Google said the service would be continuously updated
throughout the day. “What’s different about Google’s News Search is the
unique grouping technology Google has developed to automatically put related
stories together in the same search result. This makes it easy to quickly
scan the headlines while providing the option of reading multiple accounts
of a story from different news sources,” it said.
“As we continue to improve our (Weblog) service, we’ll be adding more news
sources and updating our index of stories more frequently,” the company
said.
Google, the privately-held firm founded in 1998 by Stanford graduates Larry
Page and Sergey Brin, said the headlines that appear in the Weblog are
selected entirely by a mathematical algorithm, based on how and where the
stories appear elsewhere on the web.
“There are no human editors at Google selecting or grouping the headlines
and no individual decides which stories get top placement. This occasionally
results in some stories appearing to be out of context,” the company said,
urging readers to send feedback on odd results.
During the beta phase of the new service, Google said it welcomed
suggestions for enhancements.
“What news sources would you like to see added? What advanced search
features would be helpful? Are story groups a good idea or do they get in
the way?” it asked.
Google is not the first high-profile company to get into the business of
Weblogging. The New York Times, for instance, runs the popular
DealBook ‘blog, an e-mail product launched last October to dish third-party headlines about financial news and
information.
Other popular Weblogs include Jim Romenesko’s MediaNews, Hylton Jolliffe’s Corante, John Paczkowski’s Good Morning Silicon Valley or Glenn Fleishman’s 802.11b Networking News.
Since 1996, InternetNews.com has operated the Newslinx Web site, an early predecessor to weblogs.
