A few days ago it was announced that Google News had evolved yet again: it would rehost wire content, courtesy of the Associated Press and a few other agencies. At the time I didn’t actually have any examples, but thanks to some intrepid digging by ultra digger Muhammad Saleem, I’ve found one.
There is a story about the Church of Scientology, involving how it may be the target of criminal charges courtesy of the Belgian government. While the story is Associated Press, its actually hosted right on Google right here.
A couple of observations:
More than half of the number of sites get dropped: Now, as I mentioned in my prior post, Google is introducing re-hosted news under the rubric of improving the users experience, including the duplication of stories. If you search “Scientology Belgium” under Google News, you get 81 79 results. The “default” setting is to have duplicate results *excluded*. If you include duplicate results you have just over 200 news results. Yes, that’s 120 news sites that are now not being listed under Google News Bad news for them, but perhaps this makes sense. After all, they are all identical in their content.
Google ranks its own rehosted story favourably: The Google hosted story? Its ranked fourth, right behind Sydney Morning Herald, Slashdot, and The Scotsman. Oh, and the Slashdot article actually points to the AP story — which, of course, is hosted at Google. Its also ahead of the Washington Post. Hmmm … ranking one’s own stories on one’s own news crawler? One does wonder how Google plans to resolve this obvious conflict of interest, particularly as Google News will continually to evolve and one day carry ads.
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In other Google news news, here’s another Google News Comment spotting.
You may have heard of a certain American Senator who decided to quit after allegedly soliciting for gay sex in a public washroom stall — and is now thinking of reneging on that resignation. There is a new registered comment on the matter, or perhaps, a related matter, courtesy of Melanie Sloan, Executive Director for the Citizens of Responsible Ethics in Washington.
In her comment she expands on a sound bit offered to CBS over here, and calls for the inquisition into two other Congressmen, Ted “The Internet Is a Series of Tubes” Stevens and David Vitter, who have both engaged in activities that are alleged to be “illegal and in violation of Senate ethics rules.”
What’s interesting about that link above (the one with the registered comment), is that the number one story there? Its courtesy of the AFP, which, interesting enough, is hosted right at Google as well.
