Google Enhances Online News Index

By Niladri Sekhar Nath

TMCnet Contributing Editor

 

In a bid to explore new sales channels for long-established media, Google Inc. will expand its online news index to include historical news stories. According to the Associated Press report, the news archive comprises of old articles published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time magazine and The Washington Post.

Articles from other information storehouses like LexisNexis, Factiva and HighBeam will also be available in Google’s (News - Alert) expanded index.

However, the news archives will have share excerpts from stories associated with users’ requests. The news index will have stories on seminal moments in history in addition to trivia about sports and science.


Google will direct those who want to see the full story to the Web sites that own the content. Those referrals turn out to be extremely profitable for media outlets. They will be able to charge for access to the full stories.

“This is going to be a very good thing for us,” the Associated Press quoted Vivian Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of NYTimes.com, as saying. “There is a tremendous hunger out there for our archives.”

Nevertheless, Google has on plan to charge commissions for the sales referrals. The idea is to make profit indirectly from growing usage of its online news index.

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Niladri Sekhar Nath is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering telecommunications, service providers and networking.