Current Affairs

Google’s way of defining news, comment and editorial

By Brij ⋅ August 31, 2007 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

I love Google news and I think it serves a great purpose by aggregating all the relevant news stories. Mainstream media can thank Google for building this tool as it helps them in many ways. Though the way it’s evolving is bit worrisome. Check this news:

Google explains the difference between a news article and a comment:

Compare this with today’s Forum discussion (look for “Illegal Worker Crackdown” on this page). I am sure Google has good intentions here but they are trivializing a very very complex issue and randomly offering voice to whoever approaches them. As a big and responsible organization they need to publish guidelines for accepting comments and not just be random, like the way they are in approving adsense account. Stakes are higher here.

News trustworthiness is a key driver for ensuring fair functioning of democratic processes. Google is  tampering with it without properly disclosing the formula. Comments are opinions and opinions make editorials. Does this mean Google is now getting into editorial business?

My fear is this - there is no proper check there to stop people from saying - “this got to be true because it was there on Google news!”

Update: Mathew Ingram has a very interesting take on the Google announcement that they will now source original stories from the wires directly. He quotes a rather chilling commentory from Reuters:

Because of Google’s campaign to simultaneously reduce duplicate articles, the original wire service article is likely to be featured in Google News instead of versions of the same article from newspaper customers, sapping ad revenue to those newspapers.

Google’s attempt to reduce duplicate article reads like an extention of their core search quality initiative. If implemented correctly, this will result in more casualty for the mainstream media.

I doubt if on this particular issue, readers are going to shed any tears.