Google News at 10: How the Algorithm Won Over the News Industry

There is, on the one hand, an incredibly simple explanation for the shift in news organizations’ attitude toward Google: clicks. Google News was founded 10 years ago — September 22, 2002 — and has since functioned not merely as an aggregator of news, but also as a source of traffic to news sites. Google News, its executives tell me, now “algorithmically harvests” articles from more than 50,000 news sources across 72 editions and 30 languages. And Google News-powered results, Google says, are viewed by about 1 billion unique users a week. (Yep, that’s billion with a b.) Which translates, for news outlets overall, to more than 4 billion clicks each month: 1 billion from Google News itself and an additional 3 billion from web search.

As a Google representative put it, “That’s about 100,000 business opportunities we provide publishers every minute.”

34 notes

Show

  1. decoderzone reblogged this from futurejournalismproject
  2. theinternationalscholar reblogged this from futurejournalismproject
  3. ekco reblogged this from futurejournalismproject and added:
    “Algorithmic harvesting” - there’s...modern concept I’d like
  4. zabotage reblogged this from futurejournalismproject
  5. christhilk reblogged this from futurejournalismproject
  6. theaboveground reblogged this from futurejournalismproject
  7. aneeshiation reblogged this from shortformblog
  8. istellar reblogged this from shortformblog
  9. iustephaniehart reblogged this from futurejournalismproject
  10. cynthiahasatumblr reblogged this from shortformblog
  11. armchairsoapbox reblogged this from shortformblog
  12. shortformblog reblogged this from futurejournalismproject and added:
    This is good! But at...help smaller publications out, too. Being
  13. journalistson reblogged this from futurejournalismproject
  14. techerous submitted this to futurejournalismproject

Blog comments powered by Disqus