Google Planning To Serve "High Quality News" Passively

krou writes "The Wrap has an interesting interview with Eric Schmidt on Google's new plan for news. Google is apparently planning on rolling out 'high-quality news' to users who are not actively searching for news. It's expected to launch in approximately six months' time, and the first two news organizations to be involved will be The New York Times and The Washington Post. 'Under this latest iteration of advanced search, users will be automatically served the kind of news that interests them just by calling up Google's page. The latest algorithms apply ever more sophisticated filtering — based on search words, user choices, purchases, a whole host of cues — to determine what the reader is looking for without knowing they're looking for it. And on this basis, Google believes it will be able to sell premium ads against premium content.' Although Schmidt said that companies like the New York Times won't get any of this ad revenue, he commented that it will push stories to users who want them, drive up traffic to those stories, and in turn bring higher advertising rates for those stories." As VentureBeat points out, Google hasn't officially confirmed any of this, and with no ad revenue going to the other companies, it only partially addresses complaints that Google is profiting unfairly from the work of news publications.

Comments

So Much for the "Passive" Exposure

[RobotRunAmok]

Now who can I actively pay *not* to be exposed to stories from the NY Times or the Washington Post?

Maybe Google can get paid twice: once by the rags to get their stories shoveled to the top of the heap, and another time by the users to get them buried back down again.

Pretty clever, Google, now that I think of it...

I see new Firefox add-on coming

[hwyhobo]

two news organizations to be involved will be The New York Times and The Washington Post. 'Under this latest iteration of advanced search, users will be automatically served the kind of news that interests them just by calling up Google's page.

If it comes from The New York Times or The Washington Post, then it is extremely unlikely that it will contain anything that interests me.

I see very little long-term benefit to Google from this, and I see a lot of potentially pissed off users who do not want to be spoon fed NYT or WP crap. Seriously, anyone can find whatever news sources one wants today on the net. Why the hell would I want to have that crap shoved into my face every time I want to do a search?

I will bet you within weeks of Google launching this idiocy, someone will write an add-on for Firefox to block it.