Google News is an automated news compilation service provided by Google Inc. The Google News website was introduced as a beta release in April 2002. There are different versions of the aggregator for more than 20 languages, with more added all the time.

To quell any charges of reporting bias, the service is fully automated with no human editors. However, the sources included are determined by human review, and their selection has come up for criticism. One site that had been passed over previously, the Little Green Footballs weblog, in March 2005 called attention to Google's inclusion of the white supremacist National Vanguard magazine, and the resulting controversy forced Google to remove that site from the service.

The service covers the news articles that appeared within the past 30 days on news websites in the language concerned, from various countries; for the English language it covers about 4,500 sites, for other languages less. It provides around the first 200 characters and links to the full article. Some of these websites require a subscription; in that case this is noted in the Google News summary of their articles.

In March 2005, Agence France Presse (AFP) sued Google for $17.5 million, alleging that Google News infringed on its copyright because "Google includes AFP’s photos, stories and news headlines on Google News without permission from Agence France Presse." [1] It was also alleged that Google ignored a cease and desist order, though Google counters that it has opt-out procedures which AFP could have followed but did not.

Features and customization

Google News provides searching, and the choice of sorting the results by date and time of publishing (not to be confused with date and time of the news happening) or grouping them (and also grouping without searching). In the English version, there is an option to tailor the grouping to a selected national audience.

Users can request Google News Alerts on various topics by subscribing while using key words. An email is sent when a news article matching the request comes online.

Users can now customize the displayed sections, their location on the page and how many stories are visible with a JavaScript based drag and drop interface. Stories from different editions of Google News can be combined to form one personalized page, with the options stored in a cookie.

See also

• List of Google services and tools

External link

• Google News website