From Reuters:
Web search leader Google Inc. has applied for U.S. and international patents on technology to rank stories on its news site based on the quality of the news source, according to patent applications obtained by Reuters on Thursday.
Google’s search engine now automatically scours some 4,500 news sources and highlights stories, typically by popularity and timeliness, although Google does not disclose full details of its ranking system.
Google News site gathers article from disparate news outlets such as ABC News, Voice of America, the Christian Science Monitor, the World Peace Herald, Xinhua, Reuters, Bloomberg and the Los Angeles Times.
Industry watchers said that over time Google News has come to depend on more established news providers for its content.
A Google spokesman confirmed that the company has applied for the patents but declined further comment regarding whether the company will use or is already using the technology.
As Web logs and other commentary sites proliferate, postings from some have received prominent play within search result pages and on online news-gathering sites. Sometimes, such postings have carried biased or inaccurate claims.
The technology Google is attempting to patent may help the company choose the most reliable information sources, although some Web commentators have said it will create a bias toward mainstream news sources.
Oh well. Free markets and all that—though it’s funny how the first thing bigshot liberal media players do when they get filthy rich is try to normalize their own views by subjectively elevating those views above competing ideas via such dubious valuative criteria as “quality” and “reliability.”
George Soros must be so proud of the Google lads. And both the Pajamas Media project and the Bloggers News Network must be salivating at the possibility that they can fill the niche left behind by Google’s willing cyber-embrace of a quasi-censorious ‘90s-style media culture.
Yes, because we all know that the MSM are a much more reliable source than those pajama-clad geeks sitting at their keybords. It is to laugh.
Spamword, “values.” Snort.
I suspect they’ll devalue BNN, or any other new group like a Pajamas Media. But anyone is free to start a service like BNN.
My first reaction to this Google thing was very negative. On the otherhand, if they classify things in a particular way, they might just come up with what Blogs actually need – an independent and objective entry point.
Google isn’t dumb – they want to make money. If they can index without blogs, they can also index them exclusively. And if “blogs” do have a big future – someone’s going to be providing that service. t/w Press lol Can’t make some shit up.
Whoa, just broke through Websense! Yeeeeeahhhhhhh.
Substitute “Google” for “Alice Sweet” in Earl Weaver’s tirade and that covers my thoughts on Google. Fuck ‘em, there’s lots of other search engines around.
So, in essence, this isn’t a “liberal media bias” issue at all. This is a “they won’t use blogs as news sources” issue, right?
If that’s the case, it makes sense to me.
SW: policy. This Turing thing is on fire!!!!
We shall see. If their past performance is any indication, though, we can expect a degree of bias regardless of what they do to filter.
“We shall see. If their past performance is any indication, though, we can expect a degree of bias regardless of what they do to filter.”
There’s good reason to be concerned from what I’ve seen – and I think it presents a real dilemma, especially for mod cons and libertarians. If Google becomes anymore dominant as a seach mechanism, it almost invites government intervention to protect balance. But that runs the risk of making the Internet utility-like.
The best alternative would be to see more large conservative media sites, by company or aggregation – and tackle the issue from there, as opposed to a pure free speech issue.
Also, embracing a neutral search mechanism and promoting it the way many blogs now promote Google, intentionally, or not, could also help.
I’m willing to give Google a shot and see what their technology churns out as news content. I think that if they do try and buttress the old media, it’ll simply cost them money and viewers, and as you say, bloggers (not necessarily BNN or Pajamas, although we’ll try hard) will eat their lunch.
What concerns me most about things like Google is that I don’t see a way for us small, new content providers to impact the news cycle. If I got a tip that Bush was having wild gay monkey sex with Tony Blair in Times Square, and CNN didn’t cover the story, then my breaking news headline on BNN is going to go largely unnoticed in the big-fish media stream. A big enough story will draw a sufficiency of other bloggers would be enough to break the logjam – but should it take such a big story to set the agenda, rather than respond to it? I don’t think it should.
The answer is probably to have multiple Google News-type outlets – lots of different generators of big-traffic news and views. Which is one reason we at BNN (“we” meaning me and my sock monkey action figure, if I can get the baby to stop drooling on it) hope that Pajamas Media is just one of many new blogger services that find success. The only way those services can succeed independently of our remora-like connection to Google News or other outlets, though, is to have bloggers whose names have intrinsic audience appeal REGARDLESS of what Connie Chung thinks of a story. Bloggers like, for example, Jeff Goldstein, who resolutely declines to sign up with a group, probably because he know about the penis-comparison rituals that are part of being initiated into such bodies, and he doesn’t want to humiliate us all with his 11 inches of man sausage.
Robert, don’t you know that all internet cocks are 13”?
Heh. Spamword, “give,” as in, well, you know.
I guess in that case, he’d be ashamed about his two-inch inadequacy.
There is some whacked out psychological theory that goes something like: “We become what we fear most.” Google started and became the biggest because they refused to rank by money paid by advertisers and didn’t put their politics in there. Now they are ad rich and obviously are putting their liberal politics in there. I have found Google to be lacking over the past few months and have leaned on Ask Jeeves more and more. Not saying I won’t use them, but I double check my sources now and frequently find Ask to be a better source.