So four months after I unbashedly proclaimed that Google News would change the world as we know it (or something like that), the New York Times has done a bit of a pseudo-update on how things have done in the interim.

To say that progress has been “modest” would be a dramatic understatement (cue in Mat Ingram’s — a journalist himself who clearly follows new media as closely as anyone — own observations that he barely noticed that they have existed a few weeks ago), as only 150 comments have been submitted over the life of the “beta” thus far.

Now, I have to say that I’m a little disappointed in this, but I’m not surprised.

Unless there’s some marketing push behind it, I am sure that many people involved *in* media stories will necessarily know that a) Google *News* exists and b) there is in fact the option to put your *additional* comments “on the Google”.

For a company that’s planning to purchase something like a company every few days for the next year, I’m sure Google has enough cash to promote the hell of out this thing. However, I suspect that there’s probably a lack of political will within Google to push for an activity that requires a substantial amount of human capital.

That is, it takes humans to vet the credentials of sources within stories (so that they can comment), and it also takes humans to find those sources in the first place to let them know that Google comments exists, and it also takes humans to actually read the comments to filter — and I’m sure they do this no matter how they deny it, even in a post-hoc way — for appropriateness and so on.

On one hand I’m glad that Google News is getting a bit of a bump through the New York Times. On the other hand, its a bit sad to see that its not quite reaching the potential that it could — because while my initial euphoria has passed, I still think that the potential is still huge, as it really allows sources *of* a story to have their own soapbox.

(because not everyone has a blog)