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Google News Leaves Beta

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the that-took-some-doing dept.

Aqws writes "As of 1/23/2006 Google News is no longer in Beta. It was in Beta for three years and four months. Here's the blog of Google News creator, Krishna Bharat, on the subject."

6 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Does it still have a built in bias? by DogDude · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Was the initial article right? You're asking if it "still" has a bias, but you're basing this on a Slashdot article, which often is about as accurate as a man standing on the street corner talking to Jesus with no pants on.

    --
    I don't respond to AC's.
  2. No, it wasnt by brunes69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Of course not, thats a bunch of hooey perpetrated by idiots on slashdot.

    Think about it for a second, why in God's name would having the word 'beta' stuck in front of it be any kind of legal insulation? The population can still access it, the "damage" if any would still be done.

    The truth is that there is nothing wrong with anything Google is doing, all they are doing is grabbing headlines and snippits. It falls under "fair use", and they direct the traffic to your news site anyway, so where's the problem? If you personally don't want your site involved all you have to do is opt-out. It is clear as day.

  3. And this is breaking news? by xoip · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Been using Google News since the beginning and thee have been few changes that I noticed... so what are the new features that come out of a full version release?

  4. Google news --- News the way I like it by XMilkProject · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I agree with alot of the posters calling google news "dubious" and such. There does seem to be a lack of information as to how they determine what exactly is news worthy.

    That being said, they seem to choose all the headlines that I'm interested in, and I find it quite pleasant to browse the stories there.

    Perhaps the decision making process for what qualifies as a headline is: "What will google users find interesting" -- Which seems perfectly fine by me.

    --
    Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
    Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
  5. Re:Implications. by DerekLyons · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This is a question for software developers - does a company like Google have a system that generally produces "1.0 quality" software after a certain amount of time, or does it depend entirely on the nature of a particular project?
    I wonder about Google's mythical 'quality'. These are after all the people who released a map application without a scale, and an email application with the 'delete' button hidden and time-consuming to acess.

    Google News has an even deeper and more subtle flaw - it fails to meet it's espoused goal of providing a broader perspective. All too often it's 'clusters' consist of news sources repeating, or rewriting, the same [AP|Rueters|Bloomberg|BBC|Whoever] press release. This gives the impression of legitimacy to the story - but reality they all trace back to same narrow selection of sources.

  6. Yes, it is opt-out-able by frankie · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Would it be fair use to photocopy headlines

    Would it be fair if I chopped off your head for making a bad analogy? Signs point to yes.

    If a company wants to have an internet presence it has to be searchable by Google

    Guess what? The standard Google search (web pages) and Google News are two separate systems, with independent opt-out mechanisms. So your site can remain searchable without participating in Google News.

    If you are actually whining "I want my articles to get links in Google News, but I don't want them to use any specific words or phrases from my site" then you're being a psychotic dork.