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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.
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...
So if my most common search terms are "boobies" and "robots"
It's going to show me NYTimes articles about just that? Sweet.
Ummm pardon me for asking but isn't that what a search engine does? Gets you what you they think you want? If someone developed a tool that gave me exactly what I wanted regardless of my syntax...sign me up and where do I buy stock?
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
They get you what they think you want after you ask for it. That's a critical difference between what Google does now and the proposed new system.
Ya I know ;) Even when you ask for something they are just doing a best guess. Getting exactly what you asked for is akin to solving for Zeta in a Taylor series. But yes, I love google for it's simplicity, I don't need another yahoo.com throwing random data to generate revenu...
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
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.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
Google is apparently planning on rolling out 'high-quality news' to users who not actively searching for news.
This to be followed by rolling out 'high-quality porn' to users who are not actively searching for porn (a small minority of google searches, to be sure.) Later, they plan to roll out V14gr4 and p3n1s enlargement ads targeted solely at women. Their new slogan: "Google... we know what you're really looking for!"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Grammar aside, this is downright scary:
If I'm not actively searching for news it's probably because I'm not interested in news at that particular moment, whether they are high quality, sponsored or not.
It seems Google is actively trying to find exciting new ways to become annoying.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
What is a person and their interests? At what point does Google create a prison for a person by creating a profile that represents your interests you can't break free of? What does it say about "I" if "I" can be quantified? Does "I" ever need to break free of their profile because in reality, we all filter on an implicit profile within ourselves and it never changes. After all, the profile is about opt-out of information as much as opt-in. So, when your profile prevents information from reaching you because it is filtered out, the bars of the prison are realized. In the end, does this make you stupider?
For instance, let's say I am a person that believes that the dark ages were good and the world is flat. Will information to the contrary ever come my way if I am identified as a backward person? How would I ever become enlightened to opposing view points if I am always presented with affirming information on my world perspective.