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Microsoft Plans News Aggregator

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the following-google's-business-plan dept.

wyldeone writes "ZDNet says Microsoft is planning on creating a news aggregation service similar to Google's Google News. It will draw headlines from over 4,800 sites. It will also provide customized feeds, similar to Googles News alerts. Here is the beta version of the site."

5 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Click on the "Bourne slays competition" link... by rixster · · Score: 4, Informative

    and you're in for a surprise.

    --
    Two wrongs may not make a right, but three ....
  2. Re:So how could they do this... by RazzleFrog · · Score: 4, Informative

    Have you never seen how these sites work? They don't copy the entire article onto their site. They provide a link to the original site with a short blurb. This doesn't infringe on any copyrights and, if anything, the sites are getting free advertising. In the case you link he had the information on his site. Now that doesn't necessarily mean he was infringing but you can't compare the two.

    Imagine the precedent if they did. It would totally destroy the search engine industry (which is basically all this is).

  3. Looking at the two sites ... by ggvaidya · · Score: 4, Informative

    ... all I can say is "HA HA HA HA HA!"

    See for your self. If you can read anything past the ugly blue-black-and-white font, you're a braver man than I.

    Google news stories seem more interesting as well. MSNBC basically has a lot of US-related tabloid articles, while Google has some real news. An example:

    World news according to MSNBC:

    1. U.S. hands over four French suspects at Guantanamo
    2. Prosecutors dissect Berkeley fishing story (about a murder in S.F. - how is this world news??)
    3. Jenkins asks to see US lawyer

    In contrast, Google has:

    1. French Guantanamo detainees back home
    2. Sudan Says US Using Darfur to Topple Government
    3. Freed Egyptian Says Treated Well by Iraqi Captors

    Also, Google allows you to go to country specific news feeds. I'm sorry, but MSN is going to have to do much better than this to steal my clicks. And before you argue that it's still beta, Google News had much better functionality than this before it first appeared on the Google front page.

  4. Little experiment by jsse · · Score: 4, Informative

    Search for Linux in http://newsbot.msnbc.msn.com(within first 20 hits):

    Opinion: Why Linux isn't ready for the Desktop
    Vulns: Linux Kernel Unspecified Local Denial of Service Vulnerability
    Vulns: Linux Kernel Floating Point Register Contents Leak Vulnerability
    Vulns: Linux VServer Project ProcFS Weak Sharing Permissions Vulnerability
    Vulns: Apache mod_userdir Module Information Disclosure Vulnerability
    How Microsoft Can Embrace Linux

    I love biased news source. So here I'm. :)

  5. the beta of this has been up for some time by jamner · · Score: 4, Informative

    This article was posted back in Nov of '03. go figure.