[Swprograms] OT: Google Begins Hosting News on Its Site

["Richard Cuff" <rdcuff@xxxxxxxxx>]

See http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/31/ap4073834.html

This is interesting -- to me, anyway -- for the following reasons:

As international broadcasters have struggled to remain relevant as
radio and TV have transformed, one interesting method that
international broadcasters could use to recruit new listeners was to
have a news or feature story about their country show up in Google
News; a reader could then click on the story and then be sent off to
the broadcaster's website.  I've done this more than once and then
found myself on the RNW and VOA web pages.

Theoretically, the reader might take an interest in the page they've
landed on, and thus discover the audio (and written) media produced by
RNW or VOA in other subjects.

As such, Google served as a pipeline or conduit for other news sources.

Now, with this new agreement with the Associated Press, Google's role
as a conduit is changed -- it now hosts the news itself (and can
presumably furnish its own advertising), instead of sending traffic to
other web sites.

I'll reserve final judgment until I see how it works in real life, but
I do not consider this a positive development for international
broadcasters and public awareness of international media.

Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA  USA
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