Comments on: Google Newsalerts

Google Newsalerts

kablam — Wed, 06 Aug 2003 20:05:57 -0800

Have Google keep you up to date with a news item. But judging from the vast assortment of news and comment out there, can even Google keep up?

By: KevinSkomsvold

KevinSkomsvold — Wed, 06 Aug 2003 21:48:17 -0800

Not sure if I'm flying off topic here but....... I have this feeling I'll soon be wearing Google underwear and drinking Google coffee or driving a Google car. Hell, maybe all three at the same time. Is it just me or are they becoming "all things to all people"? I get my news from varied sources, much like the rest of you so I doubt I'll need alerts. My face is pretty much buried in current events that I probably won't miss anything worthy of being alerted about.

By: antidigerati

antidigerati — Wed, 06 Aug 2003 22:45:20 -0800

Hey, Kevin... You mentioned Google underwear... and Google coffee.. no car yet I'm afraid. Aw, come one. Stop being such a downer. The News Alerts app is still search based, no? If they decided to release an OS or a new brand of beer.. then you would be justified. I personally am loving the new labs release.

By: gen

gen — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 00:57:19 -0800

I signed up. So far I like it. Glad I didn't pay $20 for the NY Times keyword email service.

By: humuhumu

humuhumu — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 04:12:41 -0800

It's a bit surprising Google has taken so long to do this. Yahoo News has been providing the same service for aaaaaages. The one superb point about this is that you don't have to register for anything - and you can be pretty sure that Google aren't going to sell you email on to anyone for spam purposes.

By: wendell

wendell — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 04:44:11 -0800

Won't need it to follow the new candidates for Governor, as long as we have MetaFilter...

By: VulcanMike

VulcanMike — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 06:47:42 -0800

I started a search for "Howard Dean" because it's fun to read articles about his campaign. It's like the NPR of the presidential race.

By: Bonzai

Bonzai — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 08:23:32 -0800

Another Google coffee mug. Google/Dilbert Mug

By: turbodog

turbodog — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 09:47:06 -0800

I started a search for "Pepsi Blue" because it's fun to read articles about the product.

By: Eloquence

Eloquence — Thu, 07 Aug 2003 12:16:19 -0800

Never got a response to this, but I'm happy they finally implemented it: From Erik Moeller To: suggestions@google.com Subject: News Alert System? Date: 20 Sep 2002 00:49:08 +0200 Hi, have you considered a news alert system, where I could enter search terms, e.g. bush iraq oil and would be alerted by e-mail when news stories that contain them are indexed? This could be turned into a viable business model, e.g. by allowing 5 free search terms per email address but charging a $5 flat fee per month for more. If possible, such an alert system would also be useful for newly indexed websites ("alert me when new websites index my name") or usenet posts, but the news search is the most obvious application. Database providers like Lexis Nexis are already making money with this type of service, but you could strongly underbid them by relying on free online sources. To advertise it, Google could add a little "Alert me by email when new pages containing 'search terms' are added to our index" link to all search result pages. The e-mail itself should contain the URL and a fair use excerpt from the page (at the very least the title) so that it can be plausibly guessed if it's a false positive. Regards, Erik