Ever since news first met the Internet, informed observers have been predicting the death of print newspapers. When it didn't happen after people began retrieving their daily news with the help of Internet search engines, the sages said it would happen after the major newspapers launched their own online editions. When it didn't happen then, either, they said it would surely follow the rise of Weblogs, or "blogs," those ubiquitous online forums of unsifted opinion. To no one's surprise, newspapers kept on appearing on doorsteps and newsstands. But now comes a development that really does look like a threat to traditional print media: Google News.
Everybody knows Google, the quirkily named search engine that celebrates its own birthday and major U.S. national holidays with appropriately colored digital balloons and confetti. Since its launch in 1998, it has established itself as one of the most comprehensive and easy-to-use general search engines, occasionally adding a helpful new feature such as a translation service or an image search. But last month it took a quantum leap as far as English-language news junkies were concerned, with the addition of its revolutionary experimental News Page.
Why revolutionary? Because it's the first news site, either print or digital, that is put together "without human editors," as the small print at the bottom of the home-page proclaims. It's all done by "computer algorithms," which crawl the World Wide Web like many-tentacled octopuses to create a perpetually updating, categorized database of breaking news stories. Never mind the freshness: Television can offer that. Just think what Google News implies in terms of balanced coverage.