Solo Technology

Well, after almost 3.5 years, our little news baby is all growed up. Or something. Anyways, in a bit out of character move, Google announced that they’re taking News out of beta. I need to add a “long time comin’” category for this one.

One thing that seems new to me is this notion of integrating their personalized search with the news:

Here’s how it works: You can sign up for Personalized Search to view and manage your history of news searches and the articles you’ve read. When you’re signed in to your Google Account, you’ll receive recommended news stories based on the previous stories you’ve read. These recommendations will be highlighted just below the top news stories on the page, in a clearly marked section. You can also get a full page of recommended stories by clicking on the section. All of this is done automatically using algorithms. For example, we might recommend news stories to you that many other users have read, especially when you and they have read similar stories in the past. We’ve also added a section to show you the most popular stories in the Google News edition you are viewing (e.g., U.S.). Now you can see the top stories being published by editors across the web, as well as other stories popular with readers, plus topics that you track or are interested in — all on one page.

Seems like a neat enough idea, I suppose. I wonder why they don’t do some sort or tagging or “folksonomy” stuff here though? I know Yahoo has a thingy that will scan an article and generate tags, so surely the G-folks do too. Daily news “clouds” would be pretty nifty… and subscription to tags would be nice too. But, perhaps I’m ahead of myself since I haven’t tried out the personalized search with the news yet. Maybe it’ll work better than I’m thinking it will. I reckon that the addition of the “Recommended” menu option, in conjunction with the personalized search, could be a powerful benefit to google newsers.

And, forgive me for being slow, but I just noticed that you can get RSS feeds from Google News. Well heck, that’s pretty cool.

3 Responses to “Google News - leaving beta”

1. Daniel, Rogue Connect on January 23rd, 2006 5:58 pm
   

   It’s great to see Google News finally move out of Beta. They’ve done a lot to improve it recently, very interesting to note that they haven’t given it an advertising revenue model like the rest of the site. It’s more like an added value service.

2. Rich G. on January 23rd, 2006 9:27 pm
   

   You scooped http://www.tipmonkies.com
   You are one post away from a google fanboi award!

3. chris on January 23rd, 2006 9:39 pm
   

   Say now… he’s posting again!

   I have to say, of all the recent google announcements (and omg, so many!), this one seems to be one that I, personally, would actually use the most.

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