Google News Leaves Beta

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."

Comments

Obvious sign.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google News coming out of Beta is a clear indication that Google has jumped the shark.

Alas, poor Google. I knew thee well.

Kettle Reporting itself black

[teiresias]

Google News Headline: Google News out of Beta.

Story at 11.

So Google News is out of Beta?

[thewldisntenuff]

But what does that mean for Google? Wasn't the point of keeping it in beta to insulate it from lawsuits from a lot of the bigger newsgroups (Reuters, AP, et al)?

Thank God!

[TWX]

I guess that since it's now not beta anymore, we can all finally use it! All of those of us who held back until it was ready for market can rest assured!

Re:Does it still have a built in bias?

[DogDude]

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.

Wow!

[creepynut]

It's already in the news!

Re:Does it still have a built in bias?

[mihalis]

Several months ago there was an article on slashdot claiming that the algorithm for google news had a built in bias to favor politically conservative/right wing news sources?

Is this still true?

Yes, the article is still on Slashdot.

Chris (ever helpful)

No, it wasnt

[brunes69]

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.

Nothing to celebrate

[SimianOverlord]

Google news is rather dubious. There's no real insight into how it selects headlines. There are reports that it will happily take as 'news' press releases from the BNP in Britain, which is a little like giving news releases from the Ku Klux Klan the same prominance as the NYT. Google caved under pressure to China to screen thoughtcrime out of its results. I'm not sure I like Google anymore.

I recently read Joel Bakan's The Corporation, which argues that due to their defining characteristic of only being beholden to profit and money, corporations are, in human terms, irredeemably psychotic. Google is an interesting case study, as it's set itself a higher moral standard, and has much further to fall. Google News was the beginning of that inevitable fall.

Re:Nothing to celebrate

[hackstraw]

I'm not sure I like Google anymore.

Well, hey, you get +1 insightful for saying you don't like google, and I get flamebate for saying I like google. Hmm.

I recently read Joel Bakan's The Corporation, which argues that due to their defining characteristic of only being beholden to profit and money, corporations are, in human terms, irredeemably psychotic. Google is an interesting case study, as it's set itself a higher moral standard, and has much further to fall. Google News was the beginning of that inevitable fall.

Yeah, I saw the film. The deal is that collections of people are the same as one person. Corporations, nations, states, sub-culture groups, etc all have "personalities", and collectively, they behave like an individual would behave.

The problem with many corps, is that they are selfish, self-centered, and greedy, just like the individuals that own and/or run them. There are exceptions. To this date, I believe Google is still an exception there. The concerns I have with them, is how much control will they be able to maintain now that the company is publicly traded and their stock is very overvalued.

The two cofounders of Google are worth between 7-11billion a piece, yet few even know their names, and they are still bluejean wearing casual guys, that do not own 20,000 square foot mansions or a boat that costs $300,000 to fill the gas tank (look it up).

At this time Google has a strong commitment to their users (read not customers, ie advertisers). This is something that people seem to miss. Sure Google takes cash from the advertisers, but that is not their focus. Their focus is to be the best, most accurate, and fastest searching thingy in the world.

I think Google will be alright for a while.

Re:Nothing to celebrate

[jackbird]

The boat runs on inkjet cartridges. It has a modified 5 HP Evinrude.

And this is breaking news?

[xoip]

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?

Re:And this is breaking news?

[thatguywhoiam]

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?

Beta is supposed to mean feature-complete, but still in testing. The term is misused a lot.

Subversion

[unixcorn]

I just read the blog. I have not used Google News and have no axe to grind. However, I can't help but worry about a service that "finds or picks" my news for me using algorithms. Isn't anyone worried that someone could be tweaking the search criteria to control what is displayed? When the news comes from many sources you learn to read into the articles what each organization's hidden adgenda is. By leaving the choices of what is presented up to a machine that is ultimately controlled by a few people rather than many editors across several outlets, we make ourselves vulnerable to suggestion or manipulation. I can see why they were worried about lawsuits....just a crazy rant.

Re:Subversion

[j-cloth]

I think that the way it works makes it less prone to bias than traditional news reading. Normal people go to cnn.com, or cbc.ca or bbc.co.uk or (god forbid) foxnews.com (see, I just inserted my bias. Wouldn't you like to be able to read a similar post from a right wing viewpoint to counterbalance mine right now?). Each of those sites has its own bias, and its own editors who may or may not be upfront about their agendas. The beauty of google news is that I can look at what each of these news sources has to say about the same story and get a better understanding of the actual story. For example it was very interesting to read the difference in opinion coming from Toronto and Miami when Canada passed same sex marriage legislation. Or today, I like to see at a glance what the Americans, Australians, and heck, even the French think about Last night's election

Google news --- News the way I like it

[XMilkProject]

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.

That's Absurd!

[TheBrutalTruth]

Only 3 years and 4 months in Beta? Haven't they learned not to rush a product to market?

how?

[dotpavan]

hmmn did you use Bayesian Filters to predict?

Beta?

[Dzimas]

Beta. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

I am still looking for...

[Yvanhoe]

... a news site like slashdot. Not for the dupes, mind you. But for the ability to comment on the news, to hear different opinions from different parts of the world, with a mecanism like slashcode moderation (that works better than nothing, as flawed as it is) able to filter the noise. Would anyone be aware of such a website ?

Re:Implications.

[DerekLyons]

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.

Yes, it is opt-out-able

[frankie]

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.