Google News
December 7, 2002 9:31 PM Subscribe
Google News is my homepage, and every day for the last few weeks the caption for the Iraq story of the day (usually in either the number one or two spot) has been "As a conflict between the United States and Saddam Hussein looms, the future of Iraq--and its billions of barrels of oil--may be decided soon." Yet the phrase hasn't appeared in any story I've read. On the theory that Google wrote this line in order to group their related stories together, this seems like editorializing, considering the obvious political subtext. Or is there another explanation? (Link just goes to the front page, but I'm betting that it will still be there next time you check.)
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I suppose we could recap whether or not the Google News experiment has been successful in the last few months: news curated solely by computer algorithms from a multitude of news sources.
In all, I've found that it's not very useful for breaking news, because it only shows up on Google News once their algorithms notice enough sources to warrant a news trend. It's amazing, however, for searching for news.
posted by waxpancake at 9:41 PM on December 7, 2002
In all, I've found that it's not very useful for breaking news, because it only shows up on Google News once their algorithms notice enough sources to warrant a news trend. It's amazing, however, for searching for news.
posted by waxpancake at 9:41 PM on December 7, 2002
I tried using Google News as my homepage for about one month...but then got utterly sick of seeing UK-centered news always in the top stories. Why so many UK-based ledes and articles? No offense to our cousins across the pond, but how the hell many stories about the freakin' Miss World riots can I possibly read, or care about?
posted by davidmsc at 10:16 PM on December 7, 2002
posted by davidmsc at 10:16 PM on December 7, 2002
Not to mention the neverending English "test"...heh. I still like Google News a lot, though.
posted by rushmc at 10:43 PM on December 7, 2002
posted by rushmc at 10:43 PM on December 7, 2002
Google News has its merits -- among them, searching thousands of news stories, from more sources than anyplace else. But it's very much a poor man's news filter, because its granularity is pretty lousy. Among other faults, rapidly-updating sites like Ananova tend to float to the top and get exposure as the "featured" story, when they're a fraction of the verbiage of an unadorned wire story. The other is that you're as often to see an international news story off the AP wire featured at (say) the Austin American Statesman, as an original article in a local venue or at least a US paper with its own international writing staff.
As an American I find the Sports section's focus on cricket baffling. Even more than soccer!
posted by dhartung at 10:43 PM on December 7, 2002
As an American I find the Sports section's focus on cricket baffling. Even more than soccer!
posted by dhartung at 10:43 PM on December 7, 2002
I've found Google News useful as a poor mans' combined news ticker for AP, UPI, AFP & Reuters. It's a hit & miss proposition, lots of repetition and minor stories, but occasionally an actual breaking story (or interesting story) appears. I have a bookmark to a search for "Reuters OR UPI OR AP OR afp", and sort by date.
posted by kokogiak at 11:06 PM on December 7, 2002
posted by kokogiak at 11:06 PM on December 7, 2002
your exclamation upon finding out the answer to your inquiry is quite interesting if taken literally
posted by mikojava at 11:14 PM on December 7, 2002
posted by mikojava at 11:14 PM on December 7, 2002
The real question here is, why isn't Metafilter your homepage?
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 11:53 PM on December 7, 2002
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 11:53 PM on December 7, 2002
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posted by tweebiscuit at 9:32 PM on December 7, 2002