Google News Now Includes 200 Year Old Content

Google News is ready for a blast from the past with its new news archive feature, with the ability of searching through 200 year old news articles! Google has announced that Archive Search, added to Google News allows access to historical newspapers alongside the latest contemporary information. Anurag Acharya, a top Google engineer who helped develop the news archive search, told Reuters that the goal of the service is to allow users to explore history as it unfolded. He added that the feature allows users to see themselves, how viewpoints changed over time for events, for ideas and for people.

Once the search term is typed in, Archive Search instantly generates a timeline of stories on that particular subject over the years, allowing surfers to target particular dates, or to observe how coverage of an issue has evolved over time. The feature, adds historical and chronological dimensions to Google News via a News Archive Search link as an alternative to searching the wider Web or zeroing in on breaking news. Users interested in historical comparisons can access the Archival Search feature at http://news.google.com/archivesearch/ but henceforth, when Google users search for certain terms on general Google search, historical links may also appear as part of Google’s standard search results.

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Participating news aggregators include Factiva (joint venture of Dow Jones & Co. Inc. and Reuters Group Plc), AccessMyLibrary.com from Thomson Gale, HighBeam Research and LexisNexis. However, Reuters is not directly offering its news through the archive search of Google News.

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