Are You Ogling Google News?

heytal asks: "Yes, It's old news, and you all have been to Google News at least once. And yes, it crawls Slashdot and considers it as one of the news sources too ;-).This article is an interesting article on how things work, and how Google News would change the industry. What I want to ask the Slashdot users is their experience with Google News, how much they use it, and how has it changed their news surfing habbits?"

Comments

It's not the New York Times

[LordNimon]

The NYT has professionals that evaluate all the news stories and make judgements as to what to put up front. Because they're very good at it, you get high-quality journalism on relevant topics on the front page. Trash news sites like ABCNews.com and CNN.com think that "American Idol" is just as important as the situation with Iraq.

However, Google News has an advantage in that it covers news sites from all over the world, and presumably the more coverage an issue gets, the more prominently it is displayed. This technically provides less bias in news stories (i.e. not so US-centric).

So, I read both sites.

Customizable Front Page

[1Oman]

It would be nice if google had a front page along the lines of slashdot the I could customize to display the headlines I am most interested in.

Also maybe some kind of MORE NEWS link that showed more headlines from the topic I am reading (such as Science and Technology) that listed more of todays stories that are not necessarily the top stories.

It's focussing my aimless boredom

[Lux Interior]

The way it's organized actually helps me dig deeper more easily on stories that grab me... I can scan for bias across several sources much more readily that way. AND it's a clearinghouse!! Kind of like the Drudge Report, without the disadvantage of having Matt Drudge in charge.

brings a tear to my eye

[MrBlic]

google news really makes me feel like I have an even better feel for what is happening in the world than I would have if I visited my usual dozen news sites. (cnn, nytimes, washington post, bbc, new scientist, burligton, vt free press, champlain channel, etc.)

At the moment, the sci-tech section shows: National Geographic subliminal tree in a zen garden and Slashdot apple open-sourcing Rendezvous. Tony blair has the headline, and the world section has a story on the ivory coast that I really appreciate that is just the kind of story that I wouldn't see on american news, but would show up on the news overseas.

I love how often it's updated. I can visit it a few times an hour, and it has a great ballance of important stories staying, and fluffy, but interesting stories passing through.

My only wish is that it had a nytimes - style NASDAQ graph or some other indicator of the financial news.

-Jim

Re:brings a tear to my eye

[MrBlic]

And another thing! Try doing a search on the google news page!

You get news stories sorted by relevance or date (more recent is usually more relavent anyay).

Searching for my home town (tiny Hinesburg Vermont) shows me what local businesses have been news-worthy recently.

Searching for manrijuana shows how many protests, busts, and crop damage has happened in the last few days.

Searching for 'Python' (I use the scripting language) shows me that around the world, there have been several dogs, two deer, a cheeta, and goat eaten by pythons. The ones that ate the deer died. So did the deer.

I don't know anywhere else I can search for current events on the web. I'm adicted.

-Jim

Interested but won't

[Viqsi]

Google News looks pretty nice. Normally I wouldn't have a problem with it.

But they've got a meta refresh tag in there so that the page continually reloads, and I have absolutely zero tolerance for any site that does that, so I don't plan on making it a regular stop for me unless they take it off.

(Yes, I've already sent email to news-feedback about it)