Google Planning To Serve "High Quality News" Passively 72
krou writes "The Wrap has an interesting interview with Eric Schmidt on Google's new plan for news. Google is apparently planning on rolling out 'high-quality news' to users who are not actively searching for news. It's expected to launch in approximately six months' time, and the first two news organizations to be involved will be The New York Times and The Washington Post. 'Under this latest iteration of advanced search, users will be automatically served the kind of news that interests them just by calling up Google's page. The latest algorithms apply ever more sophisticated filtering — based on search words, user choices, purchases, a whole host of cues — to determine what the reader is looking for without knowing they're looking for it. And on this basis, Google believes it will be able to sell premium ads against premium content.' Although Schmidt said that companies like the New York Times won't get any of this ad revenue, he commented that it will push stories to users who want them, drive up traffic to those stories, and in turn bring higher advertising rates for those stories."
As VentureBeat points out, Google hasn't officially confirmed any of this, and with no ad revenue going to the other companies, it only partially addresses complaints that Google is profiting unfairly from the work of news publications.
So Much for the "Passive" Exposure (Score:5, Interesting)
Now who can I actively pay *not* to be exposed to stories from the NY Times or the Washington Post?
Maybe Google can get paid twice: once by the rags to get their stories shoveled to the top of the heap, and another time by the users to get them buried back down again.
Pretty clever, Google, now that I think of it...
I see new Firefox add-on coming (Score:5, Interesting)
If it comes from The New York Times or The Washington Post, then it is extremely unlikely that it will contain anything that interests me.
I see very little long-term benefit to Google from this, and I see a lot of potentially pissed off users who do not want to be spoon fed NYT or WP crap. Seriously, anyone can find whatever news sources one wants today on the net. Why the hell would I want to have that crap shoved into my face every time I want to do a search?
I will bet you within weeks of Google launching this idiocy, someone will write an add-on for Firefox to block it.
That's nice, but will I be able to SHUT IT OFF? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm (attempting) working on a slow dial-up connection. By "slow" here, I mean _maybe_ 5 or 10 Kb/s (according to the 'bloze "Task 'Manager'"'s Network meter, which I have no way to fracking calibrate.
This is all that the PHB will shell out for. AOHell works well enough for him (at home, on a different machine and phone line) and he sees no need for anything else. When the Boss comes in and says "hook me up to my email", he's already dismayed that I shun his AOHell, its proprietary dialer, and its (automagically launched!) Internet Exploiter, favoring instead Firefox and an AT&T account (that he got as a freebie with his web hosting deal). He has immense difficulties with the fact that "it doesn't look the same as at home". Hey, at least I got him to upgrade it to unlimited from the original 9 hrs/month. I was able to get that only by fighting him over the AOL connection for a week or so. When I dial up here, it throws him off at home, he'd redial and throw me off, etc. Can you say "counterproductive"?
I digress. My POINT is that AOHell has recently added (their) news to their main email interface webpage, complete with rotating photos to completely saturate my 5Kb connection, making it unusable unless one _immediately_ reloads the optional "low-bandwidth, basic mode" version. If Google does this too, and I cannot shut it off, it will make Google absolutely useless to me.
Excerpts from "Top Ten Things You're Likely To Hear From A Frustrated Digital Engineer":
"You _need_ a REAL Internet connection. Dial-up, particularly AOHell, does not count."
"As your digital technology consultant, I advise you to network together all those old DOS machines. It's their only hope."
"One must be ignorant, misguided, or masochistically insane to expose a Micro$oft system to the Internet."
"NO ONE should use Internet Exploiter."
And I've already been downmodded before for that last one, so flame away.
I'd also express agreement with the chap a few posts back who opined: "I'll pay attention to American news when it quits being a fucking joke".
High Quality Google News in one step (Score:1, Interesting)