Webware

Google Fast Flip, a new service in testing for Google News.

(Credit: Google)

Google is testing a service that will let newshounds read Web pages of magazines and newspapers like they were flipping through an old-fashioned paper copy.

Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, plans to demonstrate Google Fast Flip later on Monday at TechCrunch50. It's a Google Labs project that expands the presence of publishers on Google News, organizing and displaying authorized screen grabs of news stories--not snippets--within the Google News site.

For example, readers will be able to scroll through a series of screen grabs bearing the publisher's logo that display stories on the weekend's NFL games or Kanye West's opinions on best female video of the year, also allowing them to browse by categories organized around Google News sections, the most popular stories, or news sources. They'll be able to read some of the story within a section of the Fast Flip site but will need to click through to the publisher's Web site in order to read the full story.

Fast Flip is being tested in partnership with 36 publishers, including The New York Times, Newsweek, and Salon.com, which will get a portion of the revenue from ads that Google plans to sell alongside Fast Flip pages.

Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president of digital operations at the Times, called Fast Flip "a modest R&D project" designed as an experiment to gauge click-through rates and traffic, rather than any sort of money-making venture. He declined to comment on how much revenue Google would be sharing with the paper.

Google News, of course, has been a lightning rod for criticism from the struggling newspaper industry. Some publishers believe that Google News siphons their content and discourages readers from clicking through to the source of the story by including the headline and a snippet of the story. Others grouse about the way bloggers who are merely writing and commenting on a piece of original reporting can sometimes get more exposure on Google News than the author or publisher of the original story.

Readers will be able to see a portion of the article, but will have to click through for the whole thing. Publishers will get a cut of the revenue from ads sold on the right hand rail.

(Credit: Google)

Fast Flip gives publishers more of what they want: a chance to share in the ad revenue generated by Google News combined with the spotlight and traffic that comes along with inclusion in Google News. Mayer hinted that something like this was coming in May, when she testified before Congress that "the structure of the Web has caused the atomic unit of consumption for news to migrate from the full newspaper to the individual article."

But Fast Flip requires publishers to showcase more of their content than a simple Google News listing requires, which could allow readers to completely skip clicking through after getting the gist of the story from the first few paragraphs. On the other hand, a more attractive presentation of the story could attract more clicks than a single headline might.

Since it's a partner-only service for the moment, criticism of Fast Flip will probably be muted. Nisenholtz acknowledged that the Times is trying lots of things these days to gauge what works in Web publishing. "We're in the business of learning around here in part, and we felt that this was an interesting test."

This isn't Google's only attempt to work with an industry that has been so critical of the company in the past. Google is also said to be testing a micropayments service for other publishers that don't want to embrace the free-content movement.

Google News has come under fire in Italy.

(Credit: Screenshot by Tom Krazit/CNET)

Updated 10:40 a.m. PDT with Google's response.

Competition regulators in Italy have opened an inquiry into Google News at the behest of publishers who allege they were banned from search results unless they agreed to be part of Google News.

According to reports, Google's offices in Italy were searched Thursday by regulators seeking evidence that Google forced Italian news sites to make their copy available through Google News unless they were willing to be excluded from search result pages. A complaint was filed by an Italian newspaper organization, FIEG, which also decried the lack of information made available to publishers as to how Google News organizes links to stories.

Google Italy representatives were quoted in several places as saying "The Competition Authority has notified us of a claim against Google Italy. We're finding out more details today, although we do know that it's in relation to Google News, which drives significant traffic and new readers to newspaper Web sites."

Later in the day, Google posted a blog item on the inquiry, acknowledging the existence of the claim but spending most of the post explaining how publishers can remove themselves from Google News, but not search results, at their request.

Google News is definitely a sore spot for many publishing companies, who feel Google's news aggregation site siphons readers from their own Web sites. Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, appeared before Congress in May to defend Google against such charges, saying that Google directs an awful lot of traffic--which can be turned into ad revenue--to newspaper Web sites for free.

But allegations that Google is messing with search results pages in retaliation for a business decision are very serious. Google's search results are supposed to be completely automated--driven by algorithms and keywords--and a large part of the company's growth has been driven by the public belief that its search results are gospel.

The New York Times reported that Google had denied the charges regarding the search results. Google's blog post Thursday did not specifically address that allegation but said there is a mechanism for removing one's content from Google News yet leaving it among search results.

The inquiry also comes at a point in Google's history where just about everything it does gets examined through an antitrust lens, with a new administration in the U.S. taking a closer look at several parts of its business.

Searches for Michael Jackson surged a little before 3 p.m. PDT Thursday.

(Credit: Google)

Google has confirmed that the surge of Michael Jackson-related searches on Google News Thursday was first interpreted as an attack on its service.

Google News was inaccessible for some people Thursday afternoon right as rumors of Jackson's death began to circulate, replaced by an error message reading "We're sorry, but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can't process your request right now."

Of course, those queries were quite legitimate, as millions around the world searched for accurate information regarding Jackson following reports that he had suffered cardiac arrest. The spike in queries began at about 2:45 p.m. PDT Thursday, and Google thought the traffic was an attack for about 25 minutes before realizing what was going on.

Google also noted that it saw a huge spike in mobile searches. Yahoo's data backed up Google's; it set a record for unique visitors in a single day with 16.4 million visitors, and its lead story on Jackson's death was the most highly-visited story in its history.

Editors' note: Besides the Google News outage, there have been problems affecting other Google sites as well. Click here for the latest on those widespread Google outages. In addition, this story was corrected at 11:30 a.m. PDT to reflect that YouTube videos already had been available, but now are spotlighted as a part of a broader Google News facelift.

Google News was inaccessible for many on Thursday morning. But when it re-emerged, it sported newly prominent news videos hosted at YouTube.

Some news headlines now feature a small YouTube logo. Clicking on it triggers an embedded YouTube player with a news video. Although the videos had been present before, Google is calling attention to them with the new logo as part of a facelift launched Thursday, spokeswoman Jennie Johnson said.

YouTube news videos now are prominent up on Google News.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Johnson said the videos are drawn from Google partners in the YouTube news channel.

Another change at Google News Thursday includes the addition of photos and images on the section pages devoted to topics such as Sci/Tech, World, and Business.

Thursday's changes followed another batch a week ago that added more heft to the "cluster" pages that show when you click on the "all 1,000 news articles" link that shows beneath groups of related headlines. Those earlier changes included images, excerpted quotations, sections that organize headlines by geography, and a section for blog headlines.

The greater attention to YouTube move not only increases the profile of video news within Google News, but also potentially increases the incentive for news organizations to work with YouTube. And it makes Google News more of a hub for news consumption, rather than just a mechanism for referring readers and viewers to other sites.

Some prominent media executives have been attacking Google, asserting it benefits more from professionally produced content than it gives back. Google argues that it sends billions of readers to news sites through Google News, whose results are sometimes blended into the main Google search results as well.

Earlier this year, Google began showing paid advertisements on Google News, too, when people perform searches.

Google News may be influential, but it's not perfect. The site was down Thursday morning for users in Boston, New York, the San Francisco Bay Area, Austin, Texas, and Sarasota, Fla., but worked for one user in London. One CNET News reader reported that the outage began at least at 5:50 a.m. PDT; service appeared to return for people between 6:30 a.m. and 7 a.m. PDT.

Google confirmed the outage.

"Earlier today, Google News was temporarily unavailable for many users from approximately 3:30 a.m. until around 7 a.m. Pacific Time. This issue has now been resolved," the company said in a statement. "We know how important Google News is to our users, so we take issues like this very seriously. We apologize to those users who were affected."

Twitter search, which can be a useful gauge of whether a problem with a Web site outage is widespread, showed many other reports as well.

Google News was inaccessible for many on Thursday morning.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

News on YouTube itself isn't new; YouTube has a news channel, and Google has been encouraging citizen journalists to add their own content.

And YouTube, of course, is a force to be reckoned with in online video. Of the 9.5 billion video streams delivered online in the U.S. during April, 5.5 billion of them, or 58 percent, were through YouTube, according to statistics from Nielsen Online on Thursday. And while online video stream delivery overall in April grew 24 percent year over year, it grew 36 percent for YouTube--meaning that it's not only large, but it's also gaining share.

However, Hulu, which hosts video from NBC, Fox, and now Disney, is growing faster, Nielsen said. It's in second place with 373,000 streams delivered in April, or 4 percent share, but its year-over-year growth was 490 percent, Nielsen said.

Google News Timeline provides a way to browse history through a variety of lenses. This view shows Nobel prizes.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO--Google, perhaps eager to counter any worries that its engine of innovation is sputtering after the down economy triggered the closure of various projects, shed light on two new projects and on a revamped Google Labs site for bringing others to the public's attention.

One of the two projects, News Timeline, lets people browse history through Google's eyes, with a sliding chronological framework that draws information from newspapers, Wikipedia, and other sources. The other, Similar Images lets people search for images that look like one they've already found.

Google's R.J. Pittman

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Overall, Google wants more people to try its experiments, to "engage the user as soon as possible and get the products calibrated for success," in the words of R.J. Pittman, director of product management for Google's consumer-oriented technology.

Google generally would rather gather feedback quickly and adjust course accordingly than present the world with what it deems to be a completed product, even if that risks having to withdraw products or features that flop or misfire, he said.

"Launch early and launch often," Pittman said. "There's a growing backlog of interesting things coming from Google."

The new labs site, built on Google App Engine, unifies various other labs work, including Gmail Labs, and lets people rate and comment on projects.

"We're trying to create awareness so people know when we're trying out new stuff," Pittman said. "For us to be realistic about the products, to get adaptive, we have to have a fast iteration rate."

Google's image search site can home in on a particular image, finding similar ones.

(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Timeline
The News Timeline project is the baby of Andy Hertzfeld, one of the original designers of the Apple Macintosh software and something of a Silicon Valley icon. He said he's grown interested in zooming user interfaces, and with the timeline, you can click a time category to zoom from year to month to week to day, and double-click to back out as far as a decade-level view.

"You can see how your subject evolves over time," Hertzfeld said, adding that the history goes back as far as the 1400s.

Andy Hertzfeld

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

The interface requires people to select what type of information they're seeking--newspapers, music, movies, prizes, blogs, and more. Some content comes from Wikipedia or the Freebase project to organize information on the Web that's structured with descriptive data such as dates; other content is licensed from organizations such as The Associated Press for news photos, Time magazine for its covers, or various newspapers that partnered with Google to bring their archives online.

Having to select a category in which to search runs contrary to Google's modus operandi, which generally relies on search term context to infer what type of information a person is seeking. Hertzfeld said Google tried that approach, with searches modified by keywords, but found problems in the project's currently early stages.

For now at least, Google has no plans to make money off the timeline project, Hertzfeld said. "Literally we haven't thought about it at all. First we want to get a user base who loves it," he said.

Image search
Image processing is a difficult subject for computers good at distinguishing a one from a zero but not a house from a tree. The ease with which humans perform such tasks has generally eluded computers.

Radhika Malpani

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

Image-processing software from Google and others therefore have relied inordinately on "meta data"--accompanying text such as captions and titles. Google is working on a more sophisticated understanding though, for example through face recognition in Picasa Web Albums.

On Monday, the company showed off a technology that, for a subset of images it's found on the Web, can identify similar photos. The technology works by "computing the visual distance" between two images then finding the nearest neighbors in the image database, said Radhika Malpani, the Google director of engineering who presides over image search work.

The technology can be convenient for searching for images rapidly that fit a visual idea that may be hard to express--the Louvre with its pyramid dominating the foreground, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie with Pitt on the left, for example.

I found it had some use for identification tasks--what variety of cactus is that?--though a better database doubtless would help. Google is expanding the number of photos that have been categorized with the technology.

A day after the editor of The Wall Street Journal referred to online news aggregators--particularly Google and its Google News product--as "parasites or tech tapeworms," and the chairman of the Associated Press announced an initiative to protect print media content from infringing use online, Google has fired back in a blog.

The gist of Tuesday's blog post, penned by Google associate general counsel Alexander Macgillivray: don't point fingers at us.

"We show snippets and links under the doctrine of fair use enshrined in the United States Copyright Act," he wrote. "Even though the Copyright Act does not grant a copyright owner a veto over such uses, it is our policy to allow any rightsholder, in this case newspaper or wire service, to remove their content from our index--all they have to do is ask us or implement simple technical standards."

As for the AP, Macgillivray noted that Google already pays the wire service to reprint its articles and photographs. A dispute several years ago led to this agreement.

Of course, Google News is far from the only aggregator out there. Digg, Drudge Report, and the Huffington Post are also big players. But Google is unquestionably at the top.

For the past few years, as many mainstream media outlets (particularly on the print side) began to lose revenue, influence, and readership, some of them had a pretty clear message: blame Google. At the same time, Viacom still has a billion-dollar lawsuit against Google's YouTube over pirated video content. And much of the publishing industry is far from signing on to Google's book digitization initiative.

With struggling newspapers in a panic over whether offering content online for free might not have been such a good idea in the first place, Google--the ultimate source of free content--is an even easier target.

But Google says it's part of the solution, not the problem, and insists that its search and aggregation products only serve to help drive traffic to online news sites.

"Users like me are sent from different Google sites to newspaper websites at a rate of more than a billion clicks per month," Macgillivray said in his post. "These clicks go to news publishers large and small, domestic and international--day and night."

Sony's PlayStation 3 got a small update early Thursday morning that added a new channel called Life with PlayStation. It merges news feeds, weather forecasts, and live Web cams on a giant world map.

It's an evolution on the Folding@Home application, the protein-folding scientific project that's gotten a hefty processing boost from worldwide PlayStation 3 owners who run the small application when not using their systems to play games or watch movies.

What makes the service neat is that it figures out where you are and automatically jumps to that point when you start it up. The news feeds are pulled in from Google News, while the weather reports are served up in real time via the Weather Channel. As you move around the globe, both the news and weather changes by city, and both are continuously updated throughout the day.

A similar offering was provided by Nintendo for its Wii system back in January of 2007 with both its News and Forecast channels, however in the U.S. the stories were limited to those from the Associated Press, unlike Sony's offering which pulls them in from all over the Web.

Noam Rimon, Sony Entertainment of America's senior development manager of R&D, provides a walk through the updated service in the video below.

This brings some new meaning to the idea of local news: Google has added a new layer to Google Earth that shows Google News related to the area shown on the screen.

The search company announced the addition on its Lat Long blog about geographic matters.

Google Earth now can show Google News.

(Credit: Google)

"By spatially locating the Google News' constantly updating index of stories from more than 4,500 news sources, Google Earth now shows an ever-changing world of human activity as chronicled by reporters worldwide," said Google product manager Brandon Badger.

I've been a fan of geotagging photos, but clearly the trend is much broader than that.

The Internet has made global news a reality, but there are several efforts under way to meet the demand for local news, too. Google News can be customized to show headlines from a given city, state, or ZIP code, and MetaCarta overlays links to local news on a Google map.

Google Earth is software that shows the planet, letting people zoom up close and show different layers of geographically relevant information. The company's online equivalent, Google Maps, is gradually growing more similar, gaining Google Earth's satellite views and its ability to show local photos, for example.

Reuters is reporting that shares of Blinkx, a publicly traded video search site based in the U.K., climbed 50 percent on Friday following rumors that corporate giants Google and News Corp. may be vying for an acquisition.

On Friday morning, Blinkx shares were trading at 36.75 pence, their highest value since September. That puts the company's valuation at 102 million pounds, which is equivalent to $199.2 million.

Blinkx has been publicly traded since 2007, when it merged with search engine Autonomy. As part of a clause in its initial public offering filings, Autonomy is slated to receive $50 million in the event of a buyout--and that clause expires on May 24. That may have fueled the acquisition rumors.

Google could potentially want the video search technology to fuel its YouTube property.