Google Launches News Badges

theodp writes "Does it make you sad that you're too grown up to earn Scouting Merit Badges? Well, thanks to the PhDs at Google, you can now start earning Google News badges as you read articles about your favorite topics. The more you read, the higher rank you'll attain; Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and finally, Ultimate. They say, 'Your badges are private by default, but if you want, you can share your badges with your friends. Tell them about your news interests, display your expertise, start a conversation or just plain brag about how well-read you are.'"

Corporate News != Reading

[improfane]

Contrary to popular belief, reading news that is mass produced by large corporations with vested interests and that manipulate and actively suppress fact does not make you "well read".

Not even sophomoric. Books are real reading. I want badges for the number of science fiction books. I read four in the last two weeks!

These badges just prove that you're addicted to some thing that is new and always being updated. It's like refreshing on Slashdot for a new article to appear. At least I'll get a badge for wasting my time reading the news now! Facebook culture everywhere.

Good!

[molnarcs]

I know that there'll be a steady stream of snarky remarks about who ridiculous the whole idea is, but it's still a brilliant move. Due to my work, I'm in constant touch with the "new generation" - students in the range of 13-25. And they like this kind of stuff. Don't ask me why, but they are fascinated by the possibilities of exhibitionism on the Internet - "telling the world what you're doing" kinda of stuff. Had a girlfriend a few months back, and she loved Facebook of course, and location services. She loved to "check in" every place she went to, and let everybody know that she is there. Once we traveled to the south of the city, which is a huge area of mangrove forest. There's absolutely nothing there, just a very small and rather poor fishing village, lots of water, swamp, and thick mangrove forests. And when we arrived, she was trying to check in with her phone. Amazing! This is just one of the many reasons why our relationship was brief. But the point is, that young people love collecting things like that, even if it sounds ridiculous to some of us. I'm not that old actually (34), but I know many here are older than that ;)

Re:Web history mandatory.

[jbn-o]

I refuse to give up one of the few pieces of data about me that Google allows me to control... for a few pixels.

Madam what you are is clear, we are merely haggling over price.

Re:Corporate News != Reading

[gl4ss]

just going in on a specific genre doesn't make you well read either. reading exclusively scifi and fantasy just makes you a dork idiot, too, though if you have time there's no reason why you shouldn't have read potters, if only to rip on it's stupid text and print edit techniques which are straight from elementary school to increase page count. some news give some context for reading some books though, like potters.. but it's different kind of reading when you read the news, because current events after all are current events and updates on past current events are still news. if you want to list what you've read in the past 4 weeks go ahead, it's easy enough, nobody's going to give a crap though and nobody's going to give a crap about these badges. though, how long till someone codes a firefox extension that gets you the badge levels?