Slashdot Mirror
Google Does the News
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.
I can load relevant headlines without waiting for my browser to time out on CNN's AOL/Netscape banner every time.
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.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
At the moment it has World and U.S. sections. I think what it could really do with is different regional sections, which would be default to different regions URLs. (eg. news.google.co.uk having a UK section). It really doesn't interest me that much that South Dakota is to vote on extending jury rights!
As long as it's better* than msn, excite, yahoo or the like, yes.
*bett er - adj Does not have insanely annoying banner ads everywhere, nor advertisements disguised as headlines, or random flash popups or interstitial ads.
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.
Maybe since slashdot's stories are being picked up by a big news site, this would be a good time to implement some spelling/grammar/fact checkers.
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.
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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.
I'm guessing Google still respects this, so it's pretty simple to stop it from deep linking...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Would it be possible to localize it more? Right now it is -1, Too US-Centric. This could be my startup page. :)
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 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.