What's Next For Google News

Stony Stevenson writes in with a Computerworld interview with a Google product manager talking about what's coming up for Google News, such as the possible addition of a video component and closer cooperation with YouTube. "One of Google's most popular and controversial services, Google News, is the aggregation and search site that media companies love to hate because it has become a major source of Web traffic and frustrations for many of them.... 'In an ideal world, Google News would show you who broke the story and the other articles that built on that. There are places where we're not doing that perfectly today.'"

Comments

Streaming Video

[jshriverWVU]

and their own team of reporters would be nifty. Google TV and maybe re-stream CSPAN, etc... I'd like to see that at least.

Re:Streaming Video

[gad_zuki!]

Why would i want this? This push to videofy the web isn't such a great idea. One of the nice parts of google news (or yahoo news or whomever) is that I can get various stories in a decent format and read the day's news in a few minutes. In video a few minutes is barely the intro. And the sensationism that usually goes with televised news. and the 3 minute weather report. I dont need a 3-minute weather report. I just put my zipcode into weather.com. Not to mention, like a lot of people, I cant even watch streaming video at work.

Seems like just a giant waste of bandwidth. I hope the web doesnt degenerate into just an expensive way to watch TV.

EPIC

[TripMaster Monkey]

We get closer to EPIC everyday.

Re:EPIC

[rockout]

Are you kidding me? I'm supposed to listen to that entire thing? I want my predictions of media-in-the-future presented to me in easily digested 30-second sound bites, dammit.

In fact, I've already lost interest in typing th

Good and Bad

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Finding the links and publishing who really got the scoop and who were the followers might seem like a good idea. But already there is such a great rush to publish, such a system will give more incentives to "publish first verify later" attitude.

May be Google could maintain the records of false reports, reports that were later corrected etc and come up with a "trustability" coefficient for the reporters and reporting organizations. This will probably give some incentives to verify the reports.

Re:Good and Bad

[packetmon]

One of the problems I could foresee with this will be an issue of credibility and a lot of mishmashed news. E.g. (US version) "Military personnel targeted and destroyed a terrorist training camp" ... (Arabic version) "US Military personnel bombed innocent children today..."

Who's going to determine which view of the news is correct and incorrect. Its different when you can read and infer as opposed to having someone verbally tell you their representation. PsyOps/Intelligence personnel from any country could/would have a field day with this video idea.

Re:Good and Bad

[s.bots]

I don't think "mishmashed news" would be a problem for me. I think showing both sides of the story allows people to gather a lot more information and decide for themselves what really happened. It seems like all too often people will simply believe what they're told by the most convenient media outlet and leave it at that. By aggregating all the news from worldwide sources, Google could allow people a much broader view of the world.

Re:Good and Bad

[aichpvee]

Only where there are two sides and where both are equally valid. Showing "both" sides of most controversial topics today basically requires you to show one insane position without any evidence to back it and then one that does have evidence.

Re:Good and Bad

[nbauman]

"publish first verify later" attitude. As a journalist myself I can tell you something about that attitude.

There are different news sources for different purposes, and each one requires a different degree of verifiability.

I knew a guy who edited an electronic newsletter for metals traders. In their business, they have a saying, "buy on rumor, sell on fact." They wanted rumors, and they wanted them immediately. They were paying $1,000 a year subscription for that privilege.

If you happen to be living in New Orleans, and the weather station finds out about a hurricane headed your way, you might want to know about that immediately rather than wait for the White House to verify the facts.

OTOH when I read about the potential dangers of a new drug that millions of people may be taking http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMe0780 99 , I want the facts to be checked pretty carefully. They've got plenty of time, and that's their responsibility. I read the Wall Street Journal, and they did a pretty good job of verifying the story. And they did it by their midnight deadline. I think the major news media did a pretty good job on the Avandia story -- considering that we won't be able to really verify the facts for another 5 years when the big randomized controlled trials are finished.

I also expect that when the President of the U.S. gives us reasons why we should go to war, the newspapers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller_(journa list)#New_York_Times_career:_2002-2005 won't just parrot his lies, but will do independent, skeptical investigations http://www.democracynow.org/ to get all sides of the story and give us enough information so that we can weigh the facts ourselves and figure out the truth. http://www.bartleby.com/130/2.html I could reduce journalism to one rule: Always get the other side. If they get both sides, it's good journalism. If not, it's propaganda.

There's plenty of news sources that do that. http://pulitzer.org/ http://pulitzer.org/cgi-bin/year.pl?1979,16 If you don't like the news you see on Google, be a little bit more selective in what you read.

I think readers have a certain responsibility to learn how to think. As the New Scientist suggested last week, people who know how to think will turn the argument around and look at it from the other guy's perspective. It's not fair to complain about the news media just because the stories report facts you don't agree with. If you did agree with them all the time, they wouldn't be doing their job -- which is to give your preconceived notions a kick in the ass sometimes.

Re:Good and Bad

[engwar]

I hope you're not implying that the US-centric version is always the 'valid' side and the one that might show the US in a negative light is always the 'insane position'.

Pretty please? You're not that naive, right?

Quality over quantity

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care who broke a story first. What I want is the story that covers the event best.

What's so bad about traffic?

[Lockejaw]

the aggregation and search site that media companies love to hate because it has become a major source of Web traffic and frustrations for many of them

If you'd rather not have the traffic, just say who you are, and I'll gladly avoid your site!

Google/News is the enemy of manipulation

[Anonymous Coward]

I pull plenty RSS feeds from Google/News to analyze how Media works.

You can draw charts which news channel or paper is owned by whom and make predictions how channel or paper XY will add or remove information from an article to push lobbying in one or the other direction (or sometimes both if the Ad revenue demands it).

It helped me to understand how we get manipulated. It made me ignorant for my own good.

You might believe that you find the truth between left and right? Even those days are over.

Thanks, but..

[Lord Bitman]

Contrary to what moronic sites like Digg (which last I checked only allows one submission per URL, with no editorial review) would have you believe is the "right way" to do things, I really don't care in the slightest who reported on an event "first". I care who reported on it in a manner which tells me best what I want to know about it.

Wont kudos override accuracy?

[TechnoBunny]

If people are rushing to be 'FRIST!' then wont verification of facts come a distant second to making a scoop?

Its bad enough with 24h news networks trying to out do each other - this can only make it worse. Why not rank in terms of the reliability of the source. (How one measures that is, of course, a bit of a problem...)

Lots of room for improvement

[Darth Cider]

Google News could use more depth. As it is, "top stories" run for many days and categorized in the broadest possible way, making deeper search into less popular stories very difficult. If not for the search feature and Google Alerts, the site would be indistinguishable from the Associated Press wire. Personalization just doesn't allow enough options. I would like to see more refined categories. For example, instead of the blunt "Nanotechnology" category, subheadings for solar energy news would draw lots of interest, to name just one possibility. Or create sister sites: "Google Geek News," "Google Punditry News," "Google Phun News." Sure, their RSS reader allows anyone to create a personalized aggregator, but again that places an obstacle in the way, all the work involved in generating lists. (Just emulate originalsignal.com!)

Eh, but the news is nothing really. The medium is the message. Google just wants to put ads in front of us. They have better resources than any company to help each of us find the news that will appeal to us and keep us coming back. YouTube is not the answer I was hoping for.

GeoRSS?

[Lord Satri]

TFA doesn't mentions GeoRSS. Sad since Google already supports GeoRSS and it would be more than appropriate for global news diffusion...