|
WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: September 25, 2002 Google News Could Change Online News Industry (Steve Outing) -- "Sherman considers Google News to be "a gift served up to the news industry," and he urges publishers to take advantage. Distribution of news can be served up by orders of magnitude, he suggests. It supports the news organizations with the best reputations because their content typically bubbles to the top of Google's story selections. It's also great news for small news sites, which can be exposed to a huge audience when their content occasionally bubbles up." (Comments: Is it a gift?)
Reader Comments...
It's not a gift. It has a novelty value. I check it just to see what Google ranks as top stories. That will get old quick. As a service presenting news and telling me what's important, it stinks to high heaven... 1) Distracting, often useless thumbnails Google has really blown it with this interface. More importantly, Google is bloating itself with feature creep, and with this news service, is diverging from simple interfaces. Google can be dethroned by a search engine that returns to the roots of simplicity. When I ask people why the use a particular engine, every single person -- whether they use Google, Yahoo, MSN or Netscape -- every one of them says their engine is the most effective. The truth is, they don't know. They like their engine for other reasons. I submit to you that Google is not popular because of its page rank. Yes, it is popular among us -- among tech savvy folk -- because of page rank. It is popular among regular people because of the simplicity and lack of banner ads. As Google gets heavier with features, it brings itself closer to a coup attempt. These side projects Google pursues annoy me. Stick to search. I'm ready. I'll leave Google for an engine willing to return to simpler times.
Jack, I would argue that Google is still focusing on search. However, the search is machine to machine, versus human to machine. Their backend is going out searching for news and information from news web sites. The engine returns a results page which we see as news.google.com...thoughts on this? Posted by: John S. Rhodes on September 26, 2002 12:09 PM
Google's news page was great up until a couple of days ago. The old design was simple, uncluttered, and could be scanned quickly with the eye to pick out the few stories of interest. Since its first launch back in January, Google News has been the first website I visit everyday. I'm definitely not a fan of the new design. The front page now has less variety than most mainstream Internet news sites. The story per pixel ratio has fallen through the floor, as has the the usefulnes per second ratio when it comes to being a general window on the latest news. For me, the front page of Google news is now on the verge of total irrelevance. As a news search page however, it still reigns supreme, and pure news search is all I'll likely be using it for (via the Mozilla Googlebar) for a while as well. Posted by: Lyle on September 26, 2002 01:21 PM
John, that's semantics. Technically, everything at Google is about search. My thoughts on this are what I've said here and in another thread... 1) Google is becoming about presentation, not search. It does search & data analysis to arrive at the presentation, but it's still about the presentation. 2) Google does presentation very badly. 3) Google is ready to be dethrowned. Side note: WebWord's front page link for this thread read "Add Your Comment (3)," however when I clicked the "Permanent Link," there were only 2 comments. I had to click the "Add Your Comment (3)" to see all three comments. Posted by: Jack on September 26, 2002 03:41 PM
How does 'Google News' help Google's profitability? I didn't see advertising on those pages. I can't imagine why a company would want to advertise there. Before contemplating any project, Google should be asking, "Why do we want to do this?" "Because it would be cool," is not an answer I would accept. Posted by: Jack on September 27, 2002 09:24 AM
Another reason Google News sucks: At this moment, the top Google business story is linking to a SmartMoney.com article as its main link covering IMF protester arrests in Washington. The Google-selected article cites 290 protesters arrested. Then I jump over to CNN.com to see CNN's front page citing 500 arrests. Why bother with Google when I know it's not giving me the most current news? Google as "news middleman" creates delay. Posted by: Jack on September 27, 2002 03:11 PM
It gets worse. Here I am several hours later looking through Google News for the latest IMF protest article. The only place I find IMF mentioned is in a 15-hour-old article at the bottom of the U.S. page. Meanwhile, when I visit CNN I still find the IMF story getting front page coverage, with an updated tally of 649 arrests. In contast, the 15-hour-old Google article was so old its title read, "DC Protests Expected to Draw Thousands." OMG, Google News is lame. Wait, wait, I'm wrong. Google's front page had an IMF article in the *Business* section, titled "IMF, World Bank Hold Annual Fall Meetings." Damn, the article isn't even about the protests! Posted by: Jack on September 27, 2002 09:14 PM
Home | Moving WebWord | Cool Books | Hot Web Sites
URL: http://webword.com/weblog/ ©1998-2005 by WebWord.com. All rights reserved. |