Extra, Extra, Google News Gets A Blog

Google will try to communicate what its News site is all about to news junkies and the publishers that make news available to readers.

Extra, Extra, Google News Gets A Blog

Some of Google’s most contentious dealings have happened with the newspaper industry. Complaints that Google News steals content from newspapers have led to lawsuits from agencies like AFP and Copiepresse.

Reaching out to that community to build something of a dialogue could be helpful. It looks like part of Google’s motivation to unveil its Google News blog.

“We hope publishers will learn a bit more about what Google News readers like and expect, and readers will learn a bit more about all the great content publishers churn out every day,” Google’s Joshua Cohen wrote on the blog’s initial post.

Publishers have options to automatically prevent Google from indexing their content. There has been a great reluctance to do so, likely because of the traffic Google can send to a newspaper and the paper’s online advertisers.

The communication Google can provide on the new blog, along with discussing new features, may help make those publishers more comfortable with the company and its practices.