Google Means More Than Search - Google News
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Google News and News Archive
Simply put, Google News is an automated news aggregator. It acts like a feed reader and gathers syndicated web content; in our case, that's a ton of news. It might not be a service that stands out, but in specific scenarios it turns out to be very useful.
There are various other versions of this aggregator for different languages and regions; enumerating isn't required because new ones are added on a frequent basis. Nevertheless, the most dominant is the English one, which has a basis of more than 4,500 sites for "news sources."
News is categorized, but this is complemented by a really powerful search engine. Each of the articles have a short summary, roughly the first 200 characters or so.
Check out the attached screen shot below.
(Latest Google News "Business" section with additional "Market Summary.")
As of June, 2006, this service was expanded with "News Archive Search." This is a phenomenal feature when the timing is right and you really need something from the past. Many of the news dates back 200 years or so; there's a different search engine with an additional time-line so you can dig through the archives with ease.
(Google News Archive - a few news items about "Bonaparte Napoleon")
Users have the ability to customize the way they prefer viewing the news, such as which topics are higher priority and which are unimportant. They can also opt for a feature called "alerts," which automatically sends alerts to your email or via an RSS feed each time an article comes online that meets your criteria. Oh, and you can configure the "look and feel" of the front page, how many articles per page, and so forth.
All in all, Google News provides a neat and efficient way to keep an eye on what's happening in the world by tracking the latest news. Additionally, it is possible to broadcast the feeds in "text-mode" via your mobile phone (faster access, less data to be downloaded). It deserves recognition.
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