[Sigia-l] Google Needs People

[Peter Morville]

For the record, despite my underdeveloped sense of humor (which I
attribute to the fact that I was born in England), I actually think
Google News is pretty cool and very interesting.

It has the potential to expose people to many more points of view
surrounding particular topics (e.g., Voice of America, Guardian,
Jerusalem Post, and Albawaba Middle East News)...although it may turn
out that most people reject this diversity in favor of news compilations
that fit their political views...perhaps Google will need to create
liberal and conservative versions, drawing upon different content
sources and algorithms...


Peter Morville
President, Semantic Studios
www.semanticstudios.com



-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org] On Behalf
Of John McCrory
Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2002 3:06 PM
To: 'Sigia-l at asis.org'
Subject: RE: [Sigia-l] Google Needs People


Jan C. Wright wrote:
> I was looking for Iraq stuff. I checked off and on for a few days 
> [snip] since it wasn't giving me what I wanted I stopped.
And: 
> To me, it was a "top story," it was on NPR every morning, it seemed 
> big
> enough to be out there in the front runners, but it wasn't in the
higher 
> levels of googlenews.

As I understand it, Google's algorithm selects and groups news articles
based on the the collective judgement of the editors of "more than
4,000" online news sources around the world. Consequently, the lead
stories it chooses to present 'on top' may not match those that are the
lead stories in your small part of the world, or in the news sources you
personally tend to rely on; rather, they are on top simply because a lot
of online news sites around the globe chose to publish a story on the
same subject. 

At the same time, from my experience following Google News, it seems
that Google resists the herd mentality that often overtakes our media
when some shocking story blots out everything else (shark attacks,
Chandra Levy...); While CNN and others go wall-to-wall for several hours
with the sniper story for example, Google will offer that of course, but
also will feature lots of other stories that are breaking elsewhere in
the world or country.

A lot of folks who are complaining about Google News seem to be upset
that it doesn't do things that it probably was never designed to do, and
no one from Google ever claimed it would do. It's not trying to replace
your newspaper, or replace the work of reporters and editors. It's not
trying to be your personal news service, selecting only the stories
*you* want to read. It's not trying to be an arbiter of what is news.
Rather, Google News is merely a barometer of what other people have
decided is news.

Google's cheeky comment about not harming humans turned out not to be
the best PR tactic; I suppose the Google News team has now learned that
listserv posters, bloggers, pundits, columnists, and (especially) media
critics apparently share an underdeveloped sense of humor. If, on the
other hand, Google had announced that their news headlines were selected
and grouped by human editors, what do you think the reaction would have
been? "What right does Google have to decide what's news!?" is my guess.

   John McCrory
   Webmaster 
   Vera Institute of Justice
   http://www.vera.org/


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