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Google Abandons Plan To Archive World's Newspapers
An anonymous reader writes "Throughout the past few years, Google's newspaper-scanning project has digitized more than 60 million pages from newspapers spanning 250 years, including such gems as the moon landing. But according to the Boston Phoenix, this ambitious effort is slated to soon be axed in favor of Google One Pass, a platform for publishers to monetize content from their own sites."
Google wants to help others make money (and make a little themselves) with one of their projects?
Forget Google search, I'm going with BING instead. Microsoft would never do this!
So what happens when some of those publications inevitably go out of business? We lose all of their works forever? I would hope that google could come up with some sort of middle ground. Why not continue the archival process, but allow companies still in business to choose what content is free, and what requires a fee or ads? There has to be a way that the companies can profit while still protecting us from losing the information permanently...
Google won't exist forever, what happens to the data then?
They should be taking lessons from the Stanford LOCKSS project.
If it works.
The real problem being is that those in charge of making decisions at the newspapers don't have the desire to go along with this sort of change. And let's not be coy about it. They need to change and we need them to as well. All of us need good, solid reporting of all sorts.
So far, these sorts of changes have been happening right along without them. This is yet another stop on the grand train to the digital future which most of them are willing to ignore in hopes of something else happening.
Let's see if this time they'll get their collective heads out of the sand.
In addition to being archived by the newspaper company, most local newspapers are already archived by local libraries as microfiche/microfilm. This is often required by law, as public notices are required to be placed in newspaper, and a record of this must be kept. Important national newspapers are archived by the Library of Congress, as well as multiple other libraries, where they are also digitized.
This is where Google got their source data to scan/upload in the first place.
I've always found that reading through older articles, that one retains more of the facts as they unfolded versus today's news reporting which seems to be mostly heavily biased towards sensationalism and less facts.
But then again maybe that's how reporting always took place, and I only remember the good ole days because the actual fact is my memory is selective in how I remember those days.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
People seem to make the mistake in thinking Google is about something other than leveraging search to make money. But Google has been about the BUSINESS of search at least since its IPO. Holding some illusion that Google is altruistic is just fantasy.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
See my comment to the parent. Half a dozen global vendors have already digitized and full-text indexed decades if not centuries of newspapers (depending on the importance and history of the paper). No matter how good OCR gets, it won't surpass the work already done by real humans doing data entry, transcription, and correcting OCR by hand.
The value added by Google is potentially offering this incredibly expensive effort of preserving information for free.