Political Bloggers Fed Up with Google News
Prominent liberal blogger Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, who runs one of the most popular liberal and progressive blogs in the world, says Google News is becoming unusable. "They need some serious soul-searching about what they are and what their mission is," wrote Moulitsas, better known as Kos. "A news operation needs to present news, and credible news at that. That means get rid of the blogs (mostly opinion), get rid of the no-name sites, the conspiracy sites, and the rest of that crap." Kos says he has asked Google to remove his site from Google News. Google News is Google's fourth-most visited service after the main search page, Google image search and Gmail. Google News receives about 1.5 percent of all traffic to Google. That stat has decreased from 2005, when at one point it received about 5 percent. Kos' post was a response to a thread begun on another popular political site, AmericaBlog. Writing on that site, John in D.C. said Google has watered down news sources with poorly written opinion pieces. "When I'm doing a news search, I want news site - not blogs, not left-wing conspiracy sites, or right-wing religious nutjobs," read the entry. "News. If they want a blog search engine, that's fine too. But the current state of affairs has taken a great news search engine and turned it into a bunch of noise." Comments on both blogs reveal a chorus of Google users disatisfied with what they perceive as a rampant lack of quality control at Google.* "Google News has been my homepage forever," wrote one commenter. "I thought the world was just become progessively more trivial and bizarre, but now that you mention it there must be something going on with their algorithms." Another commenter writes: "I wanted to read an article on the Nobel winner in literature, and without noticing the source, clicked on the first publication listed. A Hindu newspaper. Then noticed the story about Madonna (not that I care) and the first publication listed was Xinhua. Weird and pretty useless." Commenters also joined the discussion to defend Google News. In response to the comment about Xinhua, another commenter said the Chinese site is "a pretty interesting read if one wants to understand how the rulers of one quarter of humanity are thinking." Google News is unpopular among many publishers, who say that Google's computer-based news search undermines the editorial process and takes traffic away from news sites. Google is currently being sued by Agent France Presse for including links to AFP stories in Google News. Google was recently ordered by a Belgian court to remove all content from a Belgian newspaper. Google has been making some changes to its News site. In August it was revealed that Google has begun paying the Associated Press for its news content. In September, Google released Google News Archive search, a service in partnership with several publications that helps users search for older news items. Google News may also face competition from smaller, niche news search engines such as Techmeme. |
Comments (6)
Kos' last name is Moulitsas. Zuniga is a matronymic. Oddly, you don't note the plethora of conservative blogs who complain about Google news' tendency to list liberal blogs and ignore conservative blogs.
Posted by ffwhaaa?? | October 17, 2006 3:07 PM
Thanks for that note, I fixed his name. I wasn't aware that conservative blogs complained about Google News' liberal tendencies. That's not because I don't read conservative blogs (I don't), but because I don't read political blogs at all. I tend to rely on (shock! gasp! horror!) the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, Comedy Central, and NPR. Although I've known about Kos for years -- and I dig that former VA governor Mark Warner spoke at his convention -- the news item above was forwarded to me by a friend who knows I'm interested in Google News. Send me some links to conservative blog griping about it and I'll toss em in above.
Posted by Steve Bryant | October 17, 2006 3:29 PM
Not "a Hindu newspaper" but The Hindu (founded in 1878) published in English from 11 cities in India with a daily circulation of over 4 million copies.
Posted by Vimal Goel | October 17, 2006 6:02 PM
I know sites like BlogsforBush.com have tried to be included in Google News--and despite meeting all of the requirements of Google were denied. http://www.blogsforbush.com/mt/archives/004035.html Although I do appreciate the new voices on Google News (as the MSM does not always get the info correct) the voices of quality are dissappearing. Google needs to either list the sites included or begin to filter out the garbage on Google News.
Posted by Darnell Clayton | October 17, 2006 7:31 PM
This article is very biased in that you attack so-called "Conspiracy theorists." When you mention "real news" I think you are referring to those news sources associated with the National Press Club. The National Press Club is not in the "news" business at all. They are in the propoganda business. Their logog tells you this. On their logo is the owl Molech, standing on a fascii symbol, with the 1,000 points of light behind him and the serpent curved staff next to him. The owl is the symbol of secrecy as mentioned in Leviticus 17. Whether or not anyone believes the bible is not the issue but the fact that the National Press Club chooses these occultic symbols for their logo (as seen in any White House press release.) Check it for yourself and see: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=786048453686176230&sourceid=zeitgeist
Posted by biased | October 18, 2006 2:54 AM
I take offense to the widely-read and well-respected Indian newspaper 'The Hindu' being referred to as "a Hindu newspaper". Why can a newspaper called 'The Hindu' not have a credible, well-written article on the Nobel winner in literature? The fact that links to 'The Hindu' news stories appear so often in Google News testifies to how well quoted and 'linked-to' these articles. I would advise such commenters to get educated about the reliable, high-quality news sources around the world and not judge a source by their own narrow biases and prejudices.
Posted by Ajoy Bhatia | October 18, 2006 1:56 PM