Google to Sell Old News Articles

Krishna Dagli was one of a few people to note that Google is planning on selling old news. Or more accurately, scanning in 200 years of old newspapers, and selling people the ability to view the full text. They'll be using publications like the NYT and Time magazine. Summaries will be free, but the full article text will have a price.

Comments

Mo Money Maybe

[blueZhift]

While others note that in some cases the information Google seeks to sell may be available somewhere on the net for free, time searching for it is not free. Serious researchers or people who are just plain impatient, will gladly pay for the convenience of one stop shopping from a source they trust. As for the newspapers, a number of them already have paid archive access services, but any arrangement with Google is likely to net them more business and more money without too much more effort.

Re:there is a saying in news organisations

[Comboman]

old news is worthless, good luck getting any money for it when libraries already provide microfiche copies of newspapers going back 200+ years

Good luck entering a search term into a microfiche machine.

Re:Or just go to the library?

[Shag]

I've worked in libraries. I've even worked specifically in the periodicals / microstorage area.

Yes, libraries have the New York Times and whatever else, back a hundred or so years, on microfilm or microfiche. This is all well and good. However, the available indices may not offer full-text searches, and even if they do, they're limited to certain publications or sets of publications. Additionally, microfiche's random access capability isn't all that great, and microfilm's is nonexistent.

If Google links data from a bunch of other indices, so that I can do one search, get a bunch of different results, and then decide whether to go to the library and print copies from microstorage for a small cost per page, or simply buy an electronic "reprint" and save it as a PDF, that's better than what I had before.