Google Does It Again/ International News

Google news - like nearly all and everything by google - is in Beta since ... years.

I use a couple of those sites since .... well, since they were online, two, three years (?) now*. (They have added some now on them**.)

*In 2005, AFP sued Google because it included their (French) news and photos without licence on the French site. This dispute was later settled.
In 2007, a Belgian court ruled that Google did not have the right to display the lead paragraph from Belgian news sources when Google aggregated news stories (not sure about the outcome).

** The last one added was the Polish site, in September.



I rarely use Google news since I'm subscribed to some hundred newspapers (online print editions), a couple news agencies and a real-time news service.

Google's beta periods can last for years. Gmail has been in BETA for over 4 years and Google news (which is over 6 years old) has been out of BETA for more than two years.

I'm not sure how long they've had localized versions, but I'm pretty sure that measures in years as well.

Google news (US version) was started in 2002 and lost the beta status in 2006.
The UK version was in beta a bit longer.

Whatever! This is the first time that I noticed Google news that was geared to a many specific populations, and I find it fascinating. In the US, we read news that is geared to the US population. I think that it is very interesting that I can read stories, found easily on Google, that is directed at a different population.

Certainly that's interesting. Unfortunately, I can't read other stories than in German, English, French and Dutch. (And have some -not too good- guesses in Spanish and Italian.)

I can read a little French, some Spanish, and of course English. There are other languages that I find just interesting to see if I can read, even though I don't know what the hell they are talking about (Hebrew & Russian).

i've used the google news from various countries for a number of years .
what i like even better is http://www.google.de/ if i want to zero in on anything german .
hbg