After making publisher friendly changes to their News site, The boys and girls at Google are celebrating the birth of Google News which was ironically unveiled around the same time of the infamous terrorist attacks that rocked America.
Today we celebrate the eighth birthday of Google News. Not long after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, we started building and testing Google News with the aim of helping you find current events from a wide variety of global and political perspectives. On September 22, 2002, Google News rolled out to all English-language readers, with a dedicated News tab on Google.com.
Over the years we’ve made thousands of changes to deliver more news to more users—faster, and with enhanced customization, sharing and serendipity. We’ve added video, local news, custom sections, scanned newspaper archives and a redesigned homepage. We’ve grown from 4,000 sources to more than 50,000, and from one English edition to 72 editions in 30 languages. (Google News Blog)
Despite the fact that Google News still pales in comparison to rivals like Yahoo! News, Google has (for the most part) been the center of attention by the publishing industry (who seem to view Google as their personal ATM).
Controversy aside, Google News has for the most part made finding relevant news easier for the masses, and it will be interesting to see how Google further develops the site (which shows no sign on slowing down).
Originally posted on September 22, 2010 @ 1:49 pm