[LINK] RFI: Is Google News finally fully evil?

[Roger Clarke]

The Google News interface changed a little while ago.

It's now a lookalike with other mainstream (for me at least, dysfunctional) news-sites like SMH, The Guardian and the ABC.

Although, given that Google does no news reporting, it's leeching off the actual providers and then competing head-to-head with them.  That used to be called 'channel conflict';  but you don't argue with a 500-pound gorilla, etc.

>From this user's viewpoint, I can no longer use it for what used to be handy functions.

For example, this morning I was looking for early media uses of a currently vogue buzz-phrase.  For that, you need to be able to restrict the search by date, and work backwards through time.  (A seemingly pretty effective capability survives, at this stage at least, in the Google Scholar service).

Not only does that feature seem to be missing from the Google News interface now, but modifications from the default presentation-format require an account, and login.  (I certainly don't, and certainly won't).

I notice that a couple of canned searches still work.

For example, this still provides the last year's hits for a search-string:
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en-AU&as_q=&as_epq=Australian+Privacy+Foundation&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=y&as_sitesearch=&as_occt=&safe=images&as_filetype=&as_rights=not+filtered+by+licence

And coming in that way enables access to some of the old functionality.

Is anyone aware of ways to prolong consumer access without consumer-capture?


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			             
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
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Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University