[LINK] Google News Bugs

Roger Clarke Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
Tue Mar 23 09:47:47 AEDT 2010


Google has had a lot of trouble with its approach to Google News.

It's depended on its bright employees to be able to strike through 
complexity, and deliver useful results, without any apparent 
specification, and with testing (yuk) delegated to users.

A while back, I used Google News (and Google Scholar) as one means of 
checking out the early uses of the term 'cloud computing'.

Answering a query from an editor this morning, I went back to 
re-check the earliest use I'd located of the term in the sense in 
which it's being used these days.  (It was used both more loosely and 
for other things, prior to early-mid 2006).

The results delivered by Google News are rather different from what 
they were a couple of months ago, and a complete hodge-podge.

In particular, dates much earlier than early-mid 2006 turn up, but 
appear to be simply errors.  They appear to be picking up text from 
later articles, and treating it as thought it was in an article of a 
much earlier date.

I was using Advanced News Archive Search, at:
http://news.google.com/archivesearch/advanced_search?ned=au&hl=en

Switching to the somewhat obscure Timeline option, I got:
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22cloud+computing%22&num=50&as_price=p0&as_user_ldate=2005&as_user_hdate=2006&hl=en&ned=au&sa=N&lnav=m&scoring=t

It'll be a great service once it works ...


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University



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