Google News Leaves Beta

Aqws writes "As of 1/23/2006 Google News is no longer in Beta. It was in Beta for three years and four months. Here's the blog of Google News creator, Krishna Bharat, on the subject."

Re:Someone tell the Google art department

[asynchronous13]

try hitting "refresh"

Re:Does it still have a built in bias?

[mccalli]

Several months ago there was an article on slashdot claiming that the algorithm for google news had a built in bias to favor politically conservative/right wing news sources?

Didn't see the article you're referring to, but I doubt the allegation is true. On the UK site, I sent a note pointing out that at one time it disproportiately picked up The Scotsman and The Guardian. Don't know what the Scotsman is considered, but The Guardian is a soft-left newspaper here.

I didn't think it was political bias even then, just thought the algorithm needed a kick to get a greater spread of sources. I suspect the same algorithm would have been used for both the US and UK sites, and so I imagine in the US by chance the appearance of bias fell to the right, rather than to the left as it did in the UK.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:And this is breaking news?

[thatguywhoiam]

Been using Google News since the beginning and thee have been few changes that I noticed... so what are the new features that come out of a full version release?

Beta is supposed to mean feature-complete, but still in testing. The term is misused a lot.

Re:I am still looking for...

[kneel]

Plastic [plastic.com] is about the closest thing I have found.

Not exactly what you are looking for but there are a bunch of current events stories that are commented on.