As it stands right now, you can only select from a list of politicians provided by Google, and the site defaults to an Obama vs. McCain format that lets you compare quotes on the same issues from both sides of the fence. Different countries have different lists of people to choose from.

Of course there are flaws in the system. Sometimes it pulls quotes from the wrong people, and sometimes quotes are paraphrased, as Jason Kincaid at TechCrunch points out. If you’re familiar with Google Labs, you know that projects residing there are not "ready for prime time", and still require improvements to be made. The project is brand new, and we can’t expect it to work perfectly right off the bat. Google makes it easy to offer user feedback for this purpose.

With some work, this could turn into a really useful feature for Google News. Bloggers and journalists particularly will find tremendous value in the service if Google incorporates a feature to search for quotes from any person. Political campaign managers ought to find it useful already when it comes to piecing together new mudslinging ads.