How Google News changed the world

Although he is a computer scientist by trade, Krishna Bharat invented a news tool that has revolutionized the way the world reads news. His Google News tool is based on the basic principles of the Google portal itself. One of the most important principles of that dynamic involves getting people to where they want to go as fast as they can. With news, that means Google provides links to nearly every news subject on a single topic in one place, saving people the time and effort of finding it themselves. Key to this process is the idea of providing that service in an unbiased manner. (Google is not interested in owning the content, just providing the road to get there.)
The basic idea is "more is beautiful," he says, because even if you don't agree with what you are reading, at least you get to see all the different points of view.
Krishna enlightened the audience on the technical process involved in the coalition of Google's news operation, including the way they gather the different stories and how they prioritize them. It's highly dependent on several factors, including the editorial interest, who published it, its originality (whether it's a wire report or original reporting), etc.
The process, in brief, involves News crawling, story clustering, story ranking, and news classification.
The first internal Google News demo appeared in Dec 2001. It used only 100 sources. Today, it has customizable features and coallates news from .... sources.
Krishna says "diversity of opinions is educational, and essential for democracy" because "understanding where other people stand brings communities closer."
Another advantage is "fast access to multiple perspectives", which makes news interesting so readers can check facts quickly and go beyond the superficial.
Google News is "immune to local biases and constraints," he says.
Krishna then delved into what Google news means to the news community -- For one thing, it's a source of traffic, sending readers towards different web sites and stories. Krishna says "clustering encourages readers to read more news." It also "encourages local sources and specialists."
He calls the relationship a "symbiotic" one that "preserves individuality and user experience".
In sum, he considers Google News somewhat like a web site "hosting a conversation about stories in the news" where "all newspapers are invited." and the host "won't take sides" and "won't have a point of view."
Tarek Atia