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Google To Digitize Millions of Old Newspaper Pages

Posted by kdawson on from the all-the-news-that-fits-we-print dept.

hhavensteincw writes "On Monday Google detailed new plans to digitize millions of newspaper pages with articles, photographs, and headlines intact so they can be accessed and searched online. 'Around the globe, we estimate that there are billions of news pages containing every story ever written,' Google said in a blog post. 'It's our goal to help readers find all of them, from the smallest local weekly paper up to the largest national daily.' For example, Google noted the availability of an original article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette from 1969 about the landing on the moon." When you search the news archive for, e.g., "Chicago fire" or "Rosenberg trial," a significant fraction of the result pages cost money to view.

70 of 201 comments (clear)

  1. Paydirt! by QuantumG · · Score: 5, Funny

    http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22armadillo+aerospace%22&scoring=t

    Fuck I wish Carmack would stop using his Time Machine to get 1957 publicity.

    --
    How we know is more important than what we know.
    1. Re:Paydirt! by narcberry · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'd like to contribute.

      Where can I mail in newspaper clippings?

      --
      Modding me -1 troll doesn't make me wrong.
    2. Re:Paydirt! by martin-boundary · · Score: 2, Funny

      He's never been the same ever since he bought his new Ferrari. I'm told it goes up to 88mph.

  2. Google by Iamthecheese · · Score: 3, Funny

    From the billions of dollars of public good that is Google Maps to their true lack of evil, from their sucessful attempts to make the world a better place to the way they treat their employees, Google is truly great.

    ALL HAIL GOOGLE. ALL HAIL GOOGLE. ALL HAIL GOOGLE.

    --
    If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
    1. Re:Google by alexandreracine · · Score: 3, Informative

      You must be new here. Here how you should write it up :

      I, for one, welcome our new truly great Google overlord.

      You are welcome.

      --
      No sig for now.
    2. Re:Google by sm62704 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Don't be evil" is just an advertising slogan, like "At Pontiac we build excietement" (bad brakes, crappy handling), "Chevy - Like A Rock" (damned thing won't start), "At Ford, Quality is job 1" (Got their work cut out for them).

      Don't BE evil is a lot different than don't DO evil. They have certainly done evil; look at China, look at their doubleclick purchase, look at that Chrome snafu last week that they quickly rectified (kudos to them for that). Evil can be done mistakenly. And they're a corporation, beholden to no one but their stickholders.

      That said, this certainly is Good,. I'm hopeful that their archives will go back to the 1870s, because I may be able to find out what my name is/was.

      My late uncle did geneological research, and could not find out anything earlier than his own grandfather (although he found a wealth of information on his mother). My great grandfather, Harry McGrew, wasn't born McGrew. His parents died is a train wreck some time in the 1870s when he was a small child and he was raised by a man named McGrew in Indiana. Indiana law forbits release of adoption records, even that old.

      When I first got on the internet I searched for train wrecks in the 1970s but found little to nothing. I haven't really looked since then. But if these archives go back that far, there should be newspaper accounts of train wrecks during that decade.

      At any rate, this should be an incredibly valuable resource for a whole lot of people. I salute and thank the people at Google for this.

      Historically, history has been written by the victors of conflicts. Recently (the last few hundred years) history has been written by the newspapers. Interestingly, since the newspapers are owned by the corporations that really rule the world, history has STILL been written by the victors.

      For example, judging by newspaper accounts only, the US has only two political parties, when in fact we have five parties on the ballot in enough states to win - were the newspapers honest enough to report on them. We're lucky that the newspapers no longer have a lock on what is percieved as reality, and the "third party" parties' web sites wshould leave records for the future.

      --
      mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
    3. Re:Google by rktechhead · · Score: 2, Funny

      Google is going to start digitizing everything, and perhaps people soon enough. Want to find your grandma? Use Google Human.

    4. Re:Google by eat+here_get+gas · · Score: 2, Insightful

      [quote]...Please change your sig to something less offensive....[/quote]

      go pound sand you fuckin moron, its a sig!

      read my sig, then determine what (if anything) his sig means. idiot.

      --
      the significance of a signature is insignificant
  3. Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now, all those guys/girls who streaked during Woodstock are going to repent (more).

    But seriously...

    1. Guy/girl does something goofy in 70s as a teenager.
    2. Gets covered by local news (at that time).
    3. Google digitises that news.
    4. Now CEO (then guy/girl) is suddenly let go.

    Who hasn't done something goofy and thought in retrospect wished they hadn't done it (not necessarily something criminal). Google might make their "second chance" disappear.

    ps. Carly F. might have seen this coming ;-)

    1. Re:Great! by telchine · · Score: 3, Funny

      [quote]Who hasn't done something goofy and thought in retrospect wished they hadn't done it (not necessarily something criminal). Google might make their "second chance" disappear.[/quote]

      If only finding out about these youthful misdemeanours could end someone's career...

      http://www.dba-oracle.com/images/bill_gates_albuquerque.jpg

    2. Re:Great! by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Who hasn't done something goofy and thought in retrospect wished they hadn't done it (not necessarily something criminal). Google might make their "second chance" disappear.

      Or it might finally make people realize that we are all human, and a stupid act at 18 doesn't equate to judgment post 30. Naaahhh...

    3. Re:Great! by blahplusplus · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Or it might finally make people realize that we are all human, and a stupid act at 18 doesn't equate to judgment post 30. Naaahhh..."

      The truth is people are immature, we live short lives and don't get to reflect much on anything because most people are making a living. I forget which author commented upon the stupidity of the working classes due to lack of time, anyone know?

      The problems stem for ignorance and false behaving based on false understanding, we let people have their animal prejudices not based on anything, other then personal distaste. I think that has to change in the future personally.

    4. Re:Great! by n+dot+l · · Score: 4, Funny

      Who hasn't done something goofy and thought in retrospect wished they hadn't done it (not necessarily something criminal).

      Those that didn't get caught?

    5. Re:Great! by Meviin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      As you say: Who hasn't done something goofy? With news about all of the goofy things everyone has done easily accessible, it will be a relatively level playing field. So commonplace to be able to find out the exploits of CEOs as teenagers that 'purity' would be unattainable.

      Better than the current system where every old story is a scandal. A corollary would be the production of artificial sugars. The first one out was relatively safe (cancerous, but less so than all subsequent sugars), but it was the only one that got media attention, so people started using the even worse sugars. Because the FDA's information was less easily available to the public, people were more susceptible to media hype against a good product. Ideally, news archives would be a step against this sort of hype.

    6. Re:Great! by wisty · · Score: 2, Funny

      1. Guy/girl becomes an alcoholic, dodges the draft, gets arrested for DOI, and otherwise acts like a complete no-hoper for the first 30 years of his life. 2. Gets covered by local news (at that time). 3. Google digitises that news. 4. Now President of the United States (then guy/girl) gets elected for a second term.

    7. Re:Great! by Oktober+Sunset · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Traffic offence are acceptable in our society, being a naked hippy is not.

      --
      What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
    8. Re:Great! by sm62704 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Gates started the company. More germaine would be President Bush and Vice President Cheney's drunk driving covictions. I'd say something that could result in people getting killed is a lot more serious than streaking.

      That said, I found some of my own writings from the 1970s. I'm glad we didn't have the internet, you think my stuff NOW is weird...

      --
      mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
    9. Re:Great! by SatanicPuppy · · Score: 2, Funny

      Just look at it this way, the next time a prospective employer is judging you based on what's on your facebook page, you can whip out a photocopy of his naked hairy hippie ass and say, "What, sorry, didn't hear you?"

      --
      ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
  4. At last! by telchine · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I welcome this news. For too long, research on the Internet has been a frustrating task. For any events after about 1997, there's oodles of information. However there's a giant hole in the amount of information available for events before then. Google Books went some way towards addressing this, but it was still an intense task because a lot of the time, you still have to find and buy the books (or find them in a Library).

    I really hope they plan to go as far as putting local, regional newspapers online as well.

    1. Re:At last! by Apple+Acolyte · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The thing that bothers me about Google to this day is that there's no way to rank normal web searches by any type of date criterion. If I search keywords looking for pages related to contemporary news with a normal Google search, it's quite probable that among the top hits will be an article from 1997.

      Google News is much more functional in this regard, obviously, but it would be nice if a normal Google search were date sensitive. Yes, I know that that would require proper metadata tagging of the entire Internet if one wanted to implement such a schema in a proper fashion. But since we're dreaming, I dare to dream.

      --
      Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
    2. Re:At last! by stranger_to_himself · · Score: 4, Informative

      Google Scholar is also date-searchable for obvious reasons. It wouldn't be too hard to implement this for regular Google going forwards, since it would only have to remember when it indexed everything. I vaguely remember when every web page had a 'last-updated' line at the bottom. You don't see that much anymore, maybe because it made people look bad.

    3. Re:At last! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      stardates would go a long way towards fixing this.

    4. Re:At last! by Stooshie · · Score: 2, Informative

      ... there's no way to rank normal web searches by any type of date criterion ...

      They're working on it

      --
      America, Home of the Brave. ... .and the Squaw.
    5. Re:At last! by ColdSam · · Score: 2, Funny

      I can't imagine that ever being a serious problem.

      How an online time warp blindsided United Airlines

  5. At last, something GOOD, from Google! by G3ckoG33k · · Score: 5, Interesting

    At last, something that looks really GOOD, from Google! With free access, this will really change the world, even more.

    History revisionists will find it even more difficult to dupe.

    Maybe there are serious drawbacks, but, for the time I cannot see anything but the positive aspects.

    1. Re:At last, something GOOD, from Google! by ulash · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually history revisionists will not be affected by this at all. Remember many, if not most, of the "news" in the newspapers are (and have been) editorialized by various degrees. To make it worse, if you go back long enough you hit times where communication was so difficult between different countries that the news was basically "We heard that he heard that she heard that this is true".

      Gather enough newspapers from all around the country and pretty much anything you find will be almost as reliable as finding something written by a random blogger on the web.

    2. Re:At last, something GOOD, from Google! by DerekLyons · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Maybe there are serious drawbacks

      There are serious drawbacks, but mostly they aren't actually Google's fault.
       
      The problem is, this kind of preservation costs serious money - so it's only done once from one master. Then that one master is distributed widely.
       
      An anecdote from the early 90's, when moving newspaper archives onto microfiche really got started in a serious way. A friend was doing research for a college thesis, and the microfiche copy at his university of an obscure and long defunct western paper was missing a page (a page of the newspaper had been lost sometime in the past and thus was not in the microfiche copy) - the precise page he needed in fact. So he called around and got photocopies (real photocopies back then) from other universities whose libraries held microfiche copies of that newspaper.
       
        Each and every one of them was missing the same page.
       
      Turns out one library had paid to have their archives copied onto microfiche - and then recouped their costs by selling copies. Each and every library that had held dead tree copies had replaced them with this microfiche and then heaved the hardcopies into the dumpster.
       
      That page is now forever lost to history.

    3. Re:At last, something GOOD, from Google! by sanjosanjo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Gather enough newspapers from all around the country and pretty much anything you find will be almost as reliable as finding something written by a random blogger on the web.

      I find this comparison a little shaky. Major newspapers have long used professional (paid) journalists who are overseen by professional (paid) editors - both with reputations to protect. I don't see this type of control from a random blogger.

    4. Re:At last, something GOOD, from Google! by msuarezalvarez · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This idea you seem to have that paying someone somehow enhances their responsability is so much against every single piece of evidence! Do youalso believe that being elected to a position somehow implies that you are going to do what yuu told your voters you'd do?

    5. Re:At last, something GOOD, from Google! by PotatoSan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's inevitable that there will be errors in the process of converting from one format to another. While it's regrettable, it's not really avoidable - microfilm conversions are quality-checked by both the film producer and the recipient (at least in theory), but even the best quality checking will make some mistakes. Similar omissions can occur in the physical papers themselves. A page may have been lost at some point during the binding process, removed by a vandal, etc.

      If you read Nicholson Baker's Double Fold (which is an excellent read, but a horribly inaccurate book), you might be inclined to think that we can and should keep all original copies of newspapers in some sort of giant warehouse at minimal cost. The problem with this assessment is that it grossly underestimates the requirements of preservation. If you put old newspapers in a warehouse without temperature and humidity control, you'll get yellowed, brittle paper that will be destroyed the next time it's used. If you wanted to keep them all in a 24/7/365 climate controlled environment, that's a lot of money to spend on something that's going to be used so infrequently.

      I empathize with your friend's situation. It sucks when you find that some information you want is not available. However, the libraries that threw out their hardcopies didn't do so because something better came along (not to imply that microfilm is an improvement over original copies), but because it was the only feasible option.

    6. Re:At last, something GOOD, from Google! by T.E.D. · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Here's a not so funny story along the same vein. Back in 1921 there was a little race war in Tulsa, OK. Being less numerous, the blacks lost and their part of town was burned to the ground. Nobody to this day knows how many died in its defense and the ensuing carnage.

      One of the immediate causes was said to be an article in one of the Tulsa papers. In the ensuing coverup, all copies of that article seem to have disappeared. You can go try to look it up in your local library today if you want. Any copy of the Tulsa World from Tuesday, May 31, 1921 that historians will ever see has an article cut out of it.

  6. Should be great for armchair historians... by Anik315 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I hope they aren't restricting it to just newspapers. I've saved tons of interesting web articles from official news websites that have mysteriously disappeared over the years. They're not even in the Google cache. Hopefully, most of them will be in the Google News archive.

    1. Re:Should be great for armchair historians... by houstonbofh · · Score: 4, Informative

      Have you tried the wayback machine? http://www.archive.org/index.php

  7. I've seen that happen by Animats · · Score: 2, Informative

    Guy/girl does something goofy in 70s as a teenager. Gets covered by local news (at that time).

    I've seen that already. I looked up an executive, and Google returned a hit from a student newspaper from the 1960s that they'd digitized from microfilm. The story mentioned the guy being a member of the Socialist Workers Alliance.

    1. Re:I've seen that happen by stranger_to_himself · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Guy/girl does something goofy in 70s as a teenager. Gets covered by local news (at that time).

      I've seen that already. I looked up an executive, and Google returned a hit from a student newspaper from the 1960s that they'd digitized from microfilm. The story mentioned the guy being a member of the Socialist Workers Alliance.

      Oh no! Exec dabbled with left wing ideology in youth! By the way I was a member of the Socialist Worker Student Society when I was a student because I was trying to impress a girl. Why would anybody care?

      The people that freak me out are Young Conservatives. Those guys are creepy.

    2. Re:I've seen that happen by nospam007 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      > By the way I was a member of the Socialist Worker Student Society when I was a student because I was trying to impress a girl. Why would anybody care?

      A new right-wing McCarthy gov might prevent you from working in Schools, Universities and government jobs, you might even be barred from Hollywood.

    3. Re:I've seen that happen by YourExperiment · · Score: 5, Funny

      Oh no! Exec dabbled with left wing ideology in youth! By the way I was a member of the Socialist Worker Student Society when I was a student because I was trying to impress a girl. Why would anybody care?

      I can see why this would be harmful to his career. As soon as word got out that, at some point in his past, he actually cared about people, his reputation as a business executive would be ruined. He might never get another six-figure salaried job again.

    4. Re:I've seen that happen by cerberusss · · Score: 3, Funny

      The people that freak me out are Young Conservatives. Those guys are creepy.

      They're in it for the women.

      --
      8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
    5. Re:I've seen that happen by cthulu_mt · · Score: 5, Informative

      Bullshit. You get more action at peace rallies. Liberal chicks are easy.

      And the post-coital "I voted for George W" reveal is awesome.

      --
      Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
    6. Re:I've seen that happen by TRS80NT · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Besides...
      "Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains." Attrib. various, including Churchill.

      --
      Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
    7. Re:I've seen that happen by Creepy · · Score: 2, Funny

      No - I have a monopoly on creepy - stop stealing my thunder!

    8. Re:I've seen that happen by n+dot+l · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, given the number of abstinence-only christian chicks that get pregnant at a very young age, I'd say you have a point.

  8. Uh-oh! by zmollusc · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hope to god that they edit out the advertising otherwise all us consumers will be frantic with longing for products that are no longer available, what with advertising not being a huge sham and all!

    --
    They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
    1. Re:Uh-oh! by SeaFox · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Funny enough, I checked out the example just to see the advertising on the paper. We all know enough about the moon landing I really don't need to see a 1969 paper of the info. I wanted to see 1) How big the headline is (you notice that you don't see the old 200+pt size headlines on papers now that we used to see for things like wars ending, man on the moon, ect), and 2) Getting a kick out of the old school graphic design and ads in the paper. I was zoomed in reading the movie listing on the opposite page (I guess the back) from the moon-landing story. I didn't see any prices for admission (something to raise my ire at the current $7 "matinee") but I didn't see any evidence they had removed it either.

  9. screw the kennedys by mikeinoz · · Score: 2

    Most amazing thing to me is on the next page is a story of the fucking asshole kennedy and his murder of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick...nice one Google.

  10. Feeling a bit ill by plen246 · · Score: 5, Funny

    My thirty-year, $50-billion plan to consolidate the microfiche market may well be in the shitter.

    1. Re:Feeling a bit ill by QuantumG · · Score: 4, Funny

      Quick! Run to Congress and buy some laws to protect your ailing business model!

      There's no time to waste!

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    2. Re:Feeling a bit ill by plen246 · · Score: 2, Funny

      If I unroll the tubes, I think I can I make the Internets flat enough to microfiche.

  11. Just buy databases? by TFer_Atvar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why doesn't Google just purchase some of the better newspaper archive databases, such as NewsBank, and simply release all the stories for free? It'd likely be a lot cheaper than duplicating effort, and would help information be released more quickly.

    Incidentally, if you're close to a university or a good library, many of these places already hold subscriptions to such services and offer the use of them for free. I'd love to see Google expand upon this already-good base rather than duplicating effort.

  12. News cartels... by Brain+Damaged+Bogan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder how the news cartels will react to their copyrighted works being copied and put online... they've tried to sue google just for displaying content available on their sites and referenced from their sites with links...

    --
    -- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
  13. The Times are already out there by frenchbedroom · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can already access the archives of The Times online :

    http://archive.timesonline.co.uk/

    It's quite interesting to read about Marie-Antoinette's execution or Jack the Ripper's crimes, I especially like the writing style :)

  14. Distributed computing? by AsciiNaut · · Score: 4, Funny

    I've latterly been thinking about the googlization of everything digital. I've latterly also been thinking about the spread of botnets (Storm, Kraken and the like). This has led me to conclude there is a Google Black Ops department intent on replacing Google's vast server farms with users' own PCs - i.e., Google aims covertly to use our computers as its hardware!

    From Google's perspective it makes perfect sense to use idle cycles on Aunt Harriet's aging Dell to serve googlicious applications to an eager populace. Why shouldn't she host your gmail account?

    The whole concept can even be justified from an environmental point of view: scaling is naturally proportional to demand and load-spreading is extremely efficient. In the long term, Google won't need any of its own hardware other than expensive corporate buildings equipped with limitless executive toys and a few dumb terminals. Hell, we're beginning to see that already. Everyone benefits.

    As for the the spam emanating from botnets, this is a mere smoke-screen (or should I say cloud-screen?) designed to keep us off the scent.

    I, for one, salute our new Gotnet overlord.

  15. As the old saying goes... by PinkyDead · · Score: 3, Funny

    "The Google makes work for idle scanners."

    --
    Genesis 1:32 And God typed :wq!
  16. I can see it already: by Antwerp+Atom · · Score: 2

    Google news, brought to you by the department of truth! :)

    Let's hope they'll not be too selective in which articles they publish.

  17. A cure for seasickness? by WillKemp · · Score: 2, Funny

    I don't care if they take over the world, just so long as i don't have to scroll through years of microfilmed newspapers ever again - it makes me feel seasick!

  18. Re:Awesome by plen246 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now I can find out everyone I knew who's died with Google archiving the obituaries.

    I'm not sure why this was modded "Funny". If Google really is doing regional and local papers, given enough time and effort on Google's part, I may well be able to find stories and obits detailing the lives of relatives and grandparents with whom I never had the opportunity to talk.

    Now, if Facebook gets in on this action, things could get a little bit creepy. I don't look forward to being cyber-stalked by the dead.

  19. nail in the coffin by n3tcat · · Score: 3, Funny

    At last, I can finally go back and tell my 3rd grade teacher THIS is why I didn't need to learn how to use a flippin microfiche!!

  20. Hardly the first... by Catmeat · · Score: 5, Informative

    So... just like the London Gazette has already been digitized. The difference is, the Gazette began publishing in 1665. Sod the moon landings! You can read the front-line reports about the American Revolution.

    1. Re:Hardly the first... by MrMr · · Score: 5, Funny

      Just checking the 28 september 1776 issue. It appears that parliament has forbidden any dealing with the colonies of New Hampfhire, Maffachufett's Bay, Rhode Ifland, Connecticut, New York, New Jerfey, Penfylvania...
      I am curious about OCR fearch engine refults on this publication.

    2. Re:Hardly the first... by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 2, Funny

      They also reported that the colonists' Declaration included a statement about "Life, Liberty, and the Purfuit of Happineff."

  21. Paperspast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
    (already being done in New Zealand for some years thanks to the work of the National Library of New Zealand) papers available back to 1839. With text search too! Cool!

  22. Now if only the book police... by blahplusplus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... would allow google to do the same thing. There's been so many times what was interesting came up in a book google searched only to have pages blanked out. Sometimes I wonder if they should just put advertising on the book itself and pay the owners/authors directly (for the hits/adclicks/being read, etc).

  23. So when is google going to..... by Fengpost · · Score: 2, Funny

    So when is google going to start scanning The National Enquirer or other tabloid newspapers, so the slashdotters can look up Natalie Portman's news with grits handy!

    --
    The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity....Calvin
  24. Welcome... by interactive_civilian · · Score: 4, Funny

    Or it might finally make people realize that we are all human, and a stupid act at 18 doesn't equate to judgment post 30. Naaahhh...

    You must be new here. Welcome to Earth. We're a little strange here, but you will find that some of us can be relaxed and groovy. Enjoy your stay.

    P.S. Please take me with you when you leave the planet

    --
    "Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
  25. Google kills the library star... by yogibaer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    and we are all going to regret it. Remember the public library system? Or the archival organizations? A bunch of highly trained people with literally centuries of experience in classifying and cataloging information, preserving the originals and investing heavily in digitization to help with that task and to make them more accessible? Most of their services are free or at a minimal cost, especially for students and researchers. And completely ad-free (at least here in Europe). Sure, their marketing sucks, they do not have the latest Web x.0 gimmicks. The tend to be a bit stuffier, old fashioned and not as flashy as our bubble heroes of the "do no evil" (but don't do anyting good either) kind, but then they on average tend to think in decades and not in quarterly results. Data (even massive amounts of it) is not information and Google is not a research tool. Google will always tweak search results towards higher advertising revenues. It is at best a brute force instrument with a vey low signal to noise ratio. It is a pest because it leads people to believe that keyword search is a solid method for research and it adds to the funding problems for libraries because who needs a library, when you can "google" everything. Google sucks up all it can get and leaves behind a desert without structure, significance or context, Support and use your local (national) library, while you still have it.

    1. Re:Google kills the library star... by MMC+Monster · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Libraries will adapt.

      Maybe google will sell pre-filled servers to libraries that contain a terabyte of the news archive and a way to update directly from google.com for a nominal fee.

      Maybe libraries will just use the google archive and save all the expense and space of the microfilm archive and put it to better use.

      --
      Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
  26. No, I'm New Here by New+Here · · Score: 3, Funny

    No, I'm New Here

  27. News agencies. by Fantastic+Lad · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Do you know anybody who works in the news media? I do, several guys both in TV and paper news who have been placed all over the spectrum from editing room floors to the administrative level and even teaching positions at media and public relations colleges. They ALL report (privately) that the whole game is a giant crock of malarkey. The most interesting aspect is when the news teams don't even realize they're doing it, but simply re-broadcast biases and falsehoods because they are part of a form of non-deliberate groupthink. But it's worst when suggested stories are simply struck from the record because they don't match up with whatever political beliefs the owner happens to hold.

    One of the big problems is the AP Newswire, to which so many large journals subscribe and pull feeds from word for word. --One thin little bottleneck through which major breaking news passes, meaning entire nations uniformly learn about events which are filtered by only a very small number of people.

    The intriguing thing about bloggers is that they don't do this; they represent a broad and varied non-uniform message. This does not mean all bloggers are accurate or that there isn't the internet 'echo chamber' effect going on, but it does mean that there is actually a higher probability of actual news coming through the system. Have you ever clicked into democracynow.com? Some of the more prolific blogger sites have their own journalists covering stories and you generally get broader coverage, and people being interviewed in a non-soundbite kind of way.

    -FL

  28. American Cars by tjstork · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Don't be evil" is just an advertising slogan, like "At Pontiac we build excietement" (bad brakes, crappy handling), "Chevy - Like A Rock" (damned thing won't start), "At Ford, Quality is job 1" (Got their work cut out for them).

    Pontiac's handling has gotten a lot better. The GTO was a bit squishy but the new G8 is said to be a worthy challenger to the M5. If that's not good brakes and good handling, then I do not know what is.

    Similarly, Ford is now routinely winning various quality rankings in it car offerings... but Ford's problem is that it has too much debt and can't build enough of the cars it is selling all too well while at the same time has a lot of people building big trucks that no one wants.

    --
    This is my sig.
  29. Re:No but by arthurpaliden · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The problem is that you are going to end up with a single source for information and that in and of itself is a bad thing.

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    Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo