There are hundreds of quality newspapers, and perhaps thousands of good online sources – every current event is covered extensively in text. Still, network news shows and cable news networks carry on, and now Google News intends to embrace video, as well.
“[W]e’re showing related news videos along with our news articles to give you a broader spectrum of info available,” announced Lucy Zhang of the News Engineering Team. “You’ll see the prefix ‘Video’ next to story titles, and clicking on these video links will open a video player directly on the page so you can watch the video right there.”
Or not. I searched for “hurricane,” “mine,” and “vick” within Google News, and didn’t see a single clip. To be thorough, I ran the searches again, adding the word “video” each time – still nothing.
Ah, well. Zhang did say, “For our initial launch, we have included several top news sources such as CBS, Reuters, and a number of local Hearst TV stations,” and “[o]ver the next few months, we’ll continue to add new sources as fast as we can.”
Even after this program gets up to speed, I’m not sure that anyone will substitute a bunch of YouTube videos for a viewing of the Nightly News. Then again, I’m not sure that Google wants them to; the clips are just a nice additional feature.
