On Wednesday Google went live with their latest step towards organizing the entire world's information by looking to the past instead of the future for a change. Google News Archive SearchGoogle News Archive is service which enhances the current Google News search by providing a search which links to more than 200 years worth of printed articles from sources including newspapers and magazines.
Once on the site (via a link on the Google News homepage), a search on a particular subject will result in a comprehensive list of results from a substantial database of links to news articles (on both free and commercial websites). These results can be ordered based on the relevance to the initial search or displayed in an automatically generated timeline format, which is very useful for chronologically following events and changing opinions on a particular subject. In addition, it is possible to search the back catalogue of a particular news source providing relevant articles.
A number of media publications have been helping Google to create this archive. These include the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Journal, Guardian Unlimited, Time.com and the New York post. This cooperation suggests that the relationship between Google and the traditional media, who have often viewed the web giant with unease, is growing to be a great deal closer. This may be a case of the traditional media seeing the financial benefits of working with the search engines to direct traffic to their subscription and ad-serving sites. Officials at Google were keen to state that no preference will be given to any of Google's partners and the results were based purely on the relevancy of the articles to the search subject
Google engineer Anurag Acharya, who was involved in developing the project, said in a statement that, "the goal of the service is to allow users to explore history as it unfolded." Mr Acharya also stated that: "users can see how viewpoints [have] changed over time for events, for ideas and for people".
As an example, a timeline generated by a search on the history of Microsoft pointed to a Time article from 1983 titled "Windows on the World" which discussed plans by Microsoft to release a home computer product with windows, "a system that lets users run several different programs at once, each displayed in a separate section of the video screen," and which, "uses a cigarette-pack size 'mouse' as a control device". A youthful Bill Gates was quoted as saying "This is a milestone in software".
I think you may have been on to something there Bill.
For purposes other than mocking the past with our unfair advantage of hindsight, this latest release from Google will be an extremely helpful tool for everyone from casual browsers with an occasional historical interest through to professional and academic researchers.
At present, there are no plans by Google to serve their AdWords or any other kind of advertising alongside the results in order to generate revenue out of the service. It is true that this could change in future, but at present it would seem that Google will find their reward in making new allies within traditional media and scoring yet another set of organized information off their to-do list.
