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Google Planning To Serve "High Quality News" Passively 72

Posted by Soulskill from the grain-of-salt dept.
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.
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Google Planning To Serve "High Quality News" Passively More

Google Planning To Serve "High Quality News" Passively

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  • So Much for the "Passive" Exposure (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) on Thursday April 30, 2009 @11:58AM (#27774943)

    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...

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Now who can I actively pay *not* to be exposed to stories from the NY Times or the Washington Post?

      Just don't use Google. Seriously. They are not here to be your friend. They want to mine your data and direct you to their sponsors.

    • That's who.

      It'll probably take a little time, but as more and more people see the high journalistic quality of papers and outlets like his relative to rags like the NYT and WaPo, the market will naturally take care of the latter papers.

      Or, you know, if you're not sure you like Murdoch either, there's always USA Today.

    • "High quality news from the NY Times or the Washington Post"

  • Other News (Score:2, Funny)

    by Smivs ( 1197859 )

    In other news, Google continue to completely take over the World.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jo42 ( 227475 )

      Funded by advertising revenue. Never, ever forget that those of the 'Google is Great' cult.

  • So if my most common search terms are... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30, 2009 @12:03PM (#27775035)

    So if my most common search terms are "boobies" and "robots"
    It's going to show me NYTimes articles about just that? Sweet.

  • Can we get a 'caprica' tag? When you're enjoying your convenient personalized news, remember that you're *this* much closer to immortal cylon greatness.

  • " Quality News" is like " Military Intelligence" "Reality Television" or "Recent History", all oxymorons.
            Brushing up on information theory can show that
    poor reporting ethics, editing, spin, and propaganda all lower the quality of "News" (should be 'olds' as it's already happened").
    hmmm ,oxy=sharp moron=dull...

  • You know what I'm talking about. The big bag of Google money supposed to go to every newspaper because they are so gosh darn important. The bag of monthly money that was being legislated because driving hits to their websites wasn't funding their business model. Many newspapers were fooled into going deeply into debt by the premise that nothing would ever change, why can't Government just fix this?
  • ...so in six months time google will link me to slashdot?

  • I see new Firefox add-on coming (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hwyhobo ( 1420503 ) on Thursday April 30, 2009 @12:15PM (#27775227)

    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.

    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.

    • 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.

      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.

      Adblock will probably kill it like it kills all the other Google ads. I'm happy to read from a wide range of news sources, but when I want to do so I already can. I have RSS feeds to show me very types of breaking or important news, and while I may search for WoW info a lot each week, I never ever want to see some news story on WoW when I'm searching for someone else. I spend a lot of the day searching for work related stuff, but I don't want to see news related to it at night (or during the day for that

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Triv ( 181010 )

        I have RSS feeds to show me very types of breaking or important news, and while I may search for WoW info a lot each week, I never ever want to see some news story on WoW when I'm searching for someone else.

        See, I get sick of my rss feeds because, after a while, it becomes a whole lot of more-of-the-same - RSS gets me information I know I'm going to want like new episodes of shows uploaded to Hulu or updated web comics or, like you, WoW news, but reading the paper (the old way: bought from a newsstand

  • WTF? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Thursday April 30, 2009 @12:17PM (#27775259)
    Google is apparently planning on rolling out 'high-quality news' to users who not actively searching for news.

    This to be followed by rolling out 'high-quality porn' to users who are not actively searching for porn (a small minority of google searches, to be sure.) Later, they plan to roll out V14gr4 and p3n1s enlargement ads targeted solely at women. Their new slogan: "Google... we know what you're really looking for!"

    • Next, they'll serve news passive-aggressively:

      "Heart attacks claimed more lives this year than ever before, scientists say. Not that you care. No, fine, it's not important, it's only what killed your cousin Stanley. No biggie. Don't exercise on my account."

  • Oh boy (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dedazo ( 737510 ) on Thursday April 30, 2009 @12:25PM (#27775379) Journal

    Grammar aside, this is downright scary:

    'high-quality news' to users who not actively searching for news

    If I'm not actively searching for news it's probably because I'm not interested in news at that particular moment, whether they are high quality, sponsored or not.

    It seems Google is actively trying to find exciting new ways to become annoying.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Jason Levine ( 196982 )

      "No actively searching for news" probably means that someone is doing a Google search on the normal Google home page but the search terms match up with some news story. For example, I'm going to Disney World soon, so when I heard about a possible Swine Flu case in Orlando/Disney, I was interested. I searched Google for "Swine Flu Orlando [google.com]". Along with the search results were Google News results. I wasn't actively looking for news, but the Google News links were welcome additions to the search results.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by dedazo ( 737510 )

        It already does that to a certain extent. This must be something different, designed to up the number of sponsored crap that shows up on their search results.

  • 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 (automa

    • Sorry, anything useful you might have to say was drowned out by all your retarded "AOHell" words making you sound like an angry highschooler.

    • Great, someone write Google and tell them they can't go through with their plan cause it'll piss off Grandpa.

    • I sure hope you are still in high school because if you are any older than 19, seek help. That or you are a brilliant troll, in which case kudos to you.

    • "NO ONE should use Internet Explorer."

      Well, they shouldn't, and you are right. There are faster, smaller, more reliable browsers available for free. If they choose to use that browser, then they need to accept the flaws that come with it (Lots of security issues, slower, no plugins, renders differently from version to version, etc).

      If a person's company needs IE6 to run inshop programs, they better pray for MS to support IE6 until they can upgrade the proprietary stuff for IE7/IE8... or at least that

  • Hypothetical situation which seems to pass as high quality news these days:

    In news today, Paris Hilton has had another sex tape released, here's a clip of it here........

    Click here to order the last Paris Hilton sex DVD 'leaked'

  • I think, therefore I am a Google profile (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Snotman ( 767894 ) on Thursday April 30, 2009 @12:38PM (#27775641)
    What is a person and their interests? At what point does Google create a prison for a person by creating a profile that represents your interests you can't break free of? What does it say about "I" if "I" can be quantified? Does "I" ever need to break free of their profile because in reality, we all filter on an implicit profile within ourselves and it never changes. After all, the profile is about opt-out of information as much as opt-in. So, when your profile prevents information from reaching you because it is filtered out, the bars of the prison are realized. In the end, does this make you stupider?

    For instance, let's say I am a person that believes that the dark ages were good and the world is flat. Will information to the contrary ever come my way if I am identified as a backward person? How would I ever become enlightened to opposing view points if I am always presented with affirming information on my world perspective.

    • Interesting point, but our brains already do this for us. Take a flat-earther into space and they'll wonder why you turned the windows into funny lenses that make the Earth look round.

      Google will never actively filter the entire internet based on your preferences, so those of us who like to get new information will go and get it while the rest will keep on going with their head in the sand.

  • Porn (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'm not really that interested in pornography or nudism related news. Topics of interests and what current events I follow aren't always the same.

  • block Fox 'News'.
  • Consider:
    1. The New York Times and The Washington Post were key players in beating the drums of war in the leadup to the Iraq War. They passed along the Bush adiminstration's falsified intelligence unquestioned (remember Judith Miller?), and they underreported attendance at anti-war protests (in the most egregious case, the New York Times didn't bother to send a reporter to the protest of 100-200 thousand and ran one paragraph that stated "thousands").
    2. The CIA is rumored [slashdot.org] to be behind Google.
    3. Former CIA directo
  • it will also cross reference with my mail and Viagra will make daily headlines. can't wait!

  • I foresee a slant against stories that don't bring in ad revenue. And how could anyone ever prove it, with scads of data-driven logic making the decision of what you see and what you don't. At least if I'm doing the filtering myself, I know what I've chosen not to read.

  • I'm taking bets on how long it will be in "Beta"

    My money is on at LEAST 10 years...

  • apply ever more sophisticated filtering â" based on search words, user choices, purchases, a whole host of cues â" to determine what the reader is looking for without knowing they're looking for it

    This kind of pre-filtered content is not news it is more of the old stuff that I'm already interested in.

    Part of the appeal of a news paper or other news publication is to alert me to something that I'm not thinking of anyway. For example would you have thought of "swine flu" three weeks ago?

    I also don't understand the appeal from the perspective of a search engine. News probably should be part of my search results for the keywords I'm, looking for. But in order for it to really be useful allow me to tell i

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