Thursday, 19 June 2008
Testing... testing... is this on?
Over the course of the next few weeks, you may notice a few changes to Google News... or maybe not. You see, we'll be running some experiments on the look and feel of our site, based on an accumulation of user research and feedback, as well as the evolving state of online journalism. They'll only be visible to a small number of random Google News readers. (In case you're wondering, experiments are selected randomly, so we can't give you any advice for how to get in!)
It's pretty normal for us to run this kind of test, as we're always working to improve the experience of using Google News. In fact, experiments like these are a cornerstone of Google's development process - here's a post on the Official Google Blog explaining this practice for our search results.
Thursday, 5 June 2008
Reflections on the Sichuan earthquake
The devastating earthquake hit China’s Sichuan province at 2:28 pm on May 12. I was so worried: there was no news about what had happened shortly after the earthquake, and even worse, I was unable to reach my parents in my home town there. It was not until 2 hours later that my call to my parents finally got through, to find that, luckily, they were all safe. Despite my own good fortune, I could not help crying even in public for all the friends in my home town, whether known or unknown. The catastrophic impact was far more than the media could describe.
When the earthquake happened, we, as humans, felt ourselves to be so weak and helpless. However, as the rescue and recovery plans started, people found there was so much they wanted to do. The government, rescuers from around the world and indeed the whole nation have joined together to recover from this unpredictable disaster. Many of my colleagues in Google China helped to start several initiatives in response. The reaction to this misfortune has been overwhelmingly loving and positive. So far, the value of aid donated nationally and internationally has exceeded more than 6 billion USD.
As we, the Google News team in Shanghai, witnessed events, we had a strong desire to help keep people informed with in-depth coverage of the unfolding crisis. So we created a special section in the China edition of Google News to cover the earthquake. The section also contains a link near the top of the page which directs readers to a Checkout Donations page where they can make donations to people in need.
News carries the message, passes on stories of adversity and hope, and relieves the hardship. There’s still a lot of work to do, but we think that by spreading news about this tragedy, we can help connect people who care about it.
An aftershock of 5.3 magnitude struck Sichuan today, June 5, 2008. As of today, the China earthquake death toll has risen to over 69,100.
Our thoughts and prayers are with our fellow Sichuanese.
Thursday, 22 May 2008
News mapped out on Google Earth
It's part of the vision of Google News to crawl and index every word of every news story, around the world. It’s a lot of information, but we’re working on ways to make this index more specific. For example, our local news feature allows you to view news stories from a particular area. Now, we’re taking this concept and making it visual: the Google Earth and News teams are working together to provide you with a new way to explore current events, via a real-time News layer on Google Earth. When zoomed out, you'll see the top stories from around the globe, tagged on the globe via placemarks. If you're interested in the news about a region, just zoom in and you'll find news stories about that location. We hope this layer provides you with another way to explore and discover news, perhaps about places you didn't even know existed.
To activate the Google News layer, navigate to the "Layers" menu on the left-hand side of Google Earth. Expanding the "Gallery" node in the layers tree will expose the "Google News" layer. Check the box next to the Google News layer and start zooming into the places on the globe in which you're interested. Each story is represented by a Google News icon on the globe. Clicking on the news icon opens up the news story's snippet, along with links to learn more about the event.
Thursday, 15 May 2008
Responding to the crisis in Myanmar (Burma)
The massively destructive cyclone that struck Myanmar (Burma) has caused an extensive loss of life. However, in the wake of the cyclone, there are new crises facing the population of the country. Getting aid to those in need, stemming the spread of disease, and guarding the safety of orphaned children are among the most urgent needs.
To keep the world informed about these stories as they develop, we've launched a special section, titled Myanmar (Burma). The section is available in the English language editions of Google News in Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The lead stories appear on the front pages of these editions. Like other front page sections, you can find deeper coverage on the specific section page.
In addition to providing news coverage of the ongoing crisis, the special section contains a link near the top of the page that will direct you to a Checkout Donations page where you can make donations to UNICEF or Direct Relief International. Now you can help make a difference while you keep yourself informed.
Tuesday, 13 May 2008
Keeping good news stories together: just part of what it means to work on Google News
Have you noticed that when there are a bunch of articles about the same story, we’ll group them together? I think this is one of the key features of Google News. When you're browsing through Google News and you click on a link to see "all 257 articles" about a story, you can read perspectives from different news sources, or see how a story evolves over time.
We call these groupings of stories “clusters.” So far, we’ve only kept individual news stories together for three days, after which time they’re broken out and presented on their own.
Today, though, we’ve removed the three day limitation, meaning that stories will stay in clusters (and be easier to find) for as long as they're in our index. Since stories in Google News remain indexed for 30 days, you’ll find clusters for any news stories from the past month. Of course, this doesn’t mean that every article is going to appear in a cluster - just that clusters won’t be broken up anymore.
As an example, if you search for [dalai lama paris] in order to read about the decision of the city of Paris to make the Dalai Lama an honorary citizen, you'll get a story for that event along with related events:
In addition to greater perspective on news stories, this feature will also help us display more diverse search results on the first page: less space will be taken up by individual, unclustered articles. I think this brings us a step closer to our goal of making news universally accessible from as many sources, perspectives and languages as the world can offer.
Monday, 5 May 2008
Related Searches in Google News
We're excited to share with you a new feature of Google News: related searches. Now, when you do a search in Google News, we'll show a list of related searches at the bottom of the search results page. We think that this feature can be useful not just for adjusting and refining your search, but also as an interesting way to browse the news, perhaps finding connections between stories that you hadn't seen.
For example, searching for [zimbabwe] may suggest the following results:
In this case, you're seeing a quick snapshot of the main politicians and political parties related to the presidential elections in Zimbabwe. Click a suggested term to see Google News results for that word or phrase. At the moment, you can learn about what's happening in the upcoming United States presidential elections by looking at related searches for [mccain] or [super delegates], or about what's happening in Russia by looking at related searches for [putin].
As is normal for Google News, there are no human editors involved in selecting related searches; these suggestions are automatically generated based on an algorithm to determine terms related to your search.
Thursday, 1 May 2008
Google News now available on your iPhone and iPod Touch
As we sat in our offices in Trondheim staring off at the fjord -- we're Norwegians, that's what we do -- a thought occurred to us: wouldn't it be nice to make Google News accessible to readers on their iPod Touch or iPhone? The rest, as they say, is history.
Today, we're happy to announce that Google News is now available to iPhone and iPod Touch users in over 30 countries. This means that you'll see a full-fledged version of Google News on these devices, improved Google News results and, where available, relevant YouTube videos embedded with news stories.
There are a few ways to get to Google News using your iPhone or iPod Touch:
- Go to www.google.com, click on the "more" tab and follow the link to Google News
- Go to www.google.com and do a search, then click on the News link at the top of the screen
- Go directly to Google News at http://news.google.com in your browser
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