Last year, Google News began digitizing newspapers to make them accessible and searchable online. Those interested in the online news industry and its relationship to newspapers will be interested to know that Google has quadrupled the number of articles included in the Google News Archive Search since the initiative began in September.
Articles are coming from new sources like:
– The Halifax Gazette
– The Sydney Morning Herald
– The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
– The Village Voice
– The Manila Standard
– The Nation
– and “many others”
“News Archive Search is an ongoing effort, and we’re continuing to work with publishers to add new materials,” says Ryan Sands of the Google News Online Team.
Google has made it clear for a long time that its goal was to organize the world’s information. The newspaper archives are definitely an extension of that. By the way, earlier this year, it was reported that Google News had added over 20,000 new sources in a year’s time.
Of course not all publishers are thrilled with Google’s takeover of the news industry. You’re probably aware of the Google/Associated Press controversy. Google-owned YouTube is also penetrating the industry more and more these days. The world’s most popular video site recently made a couple of announcements related to the gathering of news content from both mainstream outlets and citizen reporters.
YouTube has also added a “news near you” section to its news page, which provides news from the region in which the user resides. Some are concerned that this will have a negative effect on local TV news.
Google appears to be becoming quite a force within the news industry. Users can access Google’s archived newspapers by searching on the News Archive Search or using the Google News timeline feature, which was launched earlier this year.
