Today Google announced the addition of Google News Singapore to the Google News family. This is the first new version of Google News since October, when they announced Google News in the Telugu language, and at the end of September when they announced the Polish version.
“As with all our new edition launches, the English-language Singapore edition is tailored to provide a mix of locally relevant news as well as globally important events,” says a blog post at the Official Google News Blog. “We hope that our readers in Singapore can now reach the best news destinations on the Internet even faster, and that news publishers in Singapore can connect to news readers even better.”
Google notes that this is just the latest in the company’s efforts to have more of a presence in Asia. I talked a bit about this back when Google bought the Korean Blog Company TNC.
“At the start of 2008, we had nine editions in Asia: India (English and Hindi),Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Israel and an Arabic edition for the Middle East,” says the post. “Now, a year later, we have almost doubled our coverage by adding seven and a half editions in Asia: Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Pakistan, India (Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam) and Turkey. Why the half? We’ll take partial credit for Turkey since it’s in Europe as well as Asia.”
Of course, Google also points out that any English-language news publishers in Singapore, and can’t find your site in Google News, you can contact the company and request inclusion.
