Google adds more ways to keep up with the news
A quiet rollout last week added several features to Google News results. The new features are meant to give searchers more ways to quickly get up to speed on a story. The add-ons alleviate, to some extent, Google’s habit of returning a whole bunch of newspaper and TV site writeups, many of them edited from the same Associated Press or Reuters syndicated reports.
A post on the Google News Blog details the additional features:
Depending on the most recent coverage and materials available for a given story, the page features top articles, quotes from the people in the story, and posts from news blogs. You’ll also find image thumbnails, videos, articles from sources based near the story, and a timeline of articles to trace media coverage of the story.
Click the image atop this story to see a large-size blowup of the buffed-up news search results.
Why is Google doing this? There’s only one answer these days: The additional news results thingies have been heavily tested and found to bring in more revenue.
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About the Author, Paul Boutin
Paul (paul@venturebeat.com) covers Apple & the iPhone, social networks & social media, digital music & video, and any crazy Internet story. Paul wrote and edited for Valleywag from 2006-2008, after several years with Wired magazine and Slate. He writes regularly for The New York Times' technology section and sometimes for Wired and The Wall Street Journal. He studied computer science at MIT in the early 1980s, and worked as a software developer and network administrator for 15 years before becoming a professional writer. Follow him on Twitter at @paulboutin, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.