Google. 'Whoring of journalism'
צילום: רויטרס
Google News: Much ado about nothing
Automated news cannot substitute for human editors
Of all the services Google is waiting to translate into Hebrew, Google News may be the most problematic. Its choice as the first service to be offered in advance of the opening of the company's Israel office could turn out to be a mistake.
As opposed to Gmail, which is waiting for a Hebrew-language interface, or the Google Talk instant messenger, Google could find it has a smaller target audience than originally planned.
As someone who could be suspected of having a personal interest here, let me say that I am well acquainted with the great flexibility of Google's search services, and I am a great believer in using XML-based feeds such as RSS to syndicate information.
I also don't think news aggregators such as Google News or MSN Newsbot pose a threat to original content sites.
Ineffective way to get updated
Still, of all the ways to receive updated news, these services are one of the least effective.
The reason: These services are based on a hard list of content providers, which the site decides for us, and they offer very little option for personalization (Google News in Hebrew includes only the most basic customization options, compared to RSS-based services such as Microsoft's start.com or Yahoo!'s MyYahoo).
Programs are poor editors
In addition, sites which rely on automated programs to comb news sites on the internet have found that computers still make very poor editors.
For example, the first item featured in the business section, from Globes, says that farmers paid NIS 115 million in taxes in 2005. I'd question whether that really is the most important business story around at the moment.
Questionable sources
At the top of entertainment page, there is an "invitation to tour Jerusalem-area water sources." No, it's not a mistake – it's a press release put out by the Nature and National Parks Protection Authority in a local Jerusalem on-line directory.
Which brings up another problem with the service – questionable sources.
Google News makes no distinction between ads and news, as journalists do. Thus, it contributes to ongoing whoring of journalism.
For example, only on such a site could an ad from an advertising circular be featured right next to a business article from The Marker.
On Google News in English, one can find more than press releases, blogs and satirical articles – in the last year the company has come under widespread criticism after adding the white supremacist National Vanguard newspaper to its search index.
All the news that’s fit to search
That's the motto that drives the New York Times. In Google's case, it should read, "All the news that's fit to search."
Because of this vast difference, Google News is mostly useful as a large archive of news links, rather than as a site that allows one to stay informed of the day's events in real time.
Some say that Google News is the great equalizer. It is a post-modern entity in which all are equal, thus adding to democracy by publishing information from a wide range of sources.
But reality is somewhat different. A 2005 study about the service found that the headlines that come up while searching Google News lean towards biased and subjective news sources.
Yahoo! News, on the other hand, is edited by human editors, and, according to Nielson/NetRatings, is far more successful.
Too slow to update
At this stage, Google News in Hebrew updates far too infrequently. Many stories on the front pages of the site are from five, six, even 12 hours ago – an eternity in the Israeli news cycle.
And even if Google speeds up the rate at which it combs the news, it will never be able to update the news headlines fast enough to satisfy the news-hungry Israeli market (the main intended audience of the service).
Few Hebrew sources
This brings us to one of the most substantial problems with Google News in Hebrew: there simply isn't enough source material. This calls into question the need of such a service in Hebrew (Google News is not the first Hebrew-language automated news center). The Israeli engine contains just 100 content sources, as opposed to 4,500 in English.
And if we take away the journals, press releases and the various biased sources, we are left with no more than 80 news sources, some of which publish identical content due to content-sharing agreements.
Google says the service will give content sites exposure to new web surfers. This may be true in English, but why do we need it in Hebrew? To read the latest advertising supplement going around Rosh Pina?
