Google News: A study in text mining

You've got to wonder how much the large media companies like CNN and BBC who each have their own firm presence on the Web hate Google News. Sure GN is pointing readers back to their sites so they get the eyeballs but it's just as likely that a user will click through to kentucky.com as CNN.com, (though there's evidence of late that GN is weighting the top sources higher now and kentucky.com is less likely to be the lead link) when previously that same reader would have just typed cnn.com into their browser and got their news from one source.

You get the feeling the relationship might be one of smiling through gritted teeth.

Google News is using the power of text mining to leverage the editorial might of many editors and news rooms. CNN, AP, NY Times, FT are all making decisions of which news item is most important and arranging their landing pages accordingly. They're paying human editors to make these value judgments. GN comes along and in the aggregate scoops up all this knowledge (text mining!) and creates a viable competitor for the best news sites out there out of whole cloth.

The irony is that GN needs its news providers for the knowledge of what's most important. So it needs the CNNs of the world to remain successful so they can keep feeding off them. CNN's ad supported model needs the clicks. Symbiotic? Perhaps, but I think Google is benefiting more.