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Just a couple of things that bother me. Perhaps you'd like to add to the list for Google to peruse.
1) The Sci/tech section is currently nearly all computer/software/space shuttle news. There's so much good stuff out there, but Google just seems to pick up the mainstream stuff. I guess that's how the algorithm works, but it's just boring. I'm a real tech & sci-fi fan, so I was expecting more from this section. There should be more "off the wall" stuff there. You know, cutting edge research which will change our lives and the latest UFO spottings!
2) Since Google picks up the main stories as the ones which appear in most headlines, breaking news and important but not widely reported news flies under the radar. There must be a lot of ways to improve on this. Perhaps headline news on a main site could make it to the front page occasionally even if it's not tied in with 50 other similar articles?
3) I noticed there are a lot of Yahoo news stories reported in the results when I do a query, but at least half the time Yahoo reports the article not found. Is that a glitch, or is it Yahoo changing the page location?
4) Any reason it's all so American-centric? Perhaps the majority of the 4500 news sources are US based? That skews the results so US stories show up more often. It's a shame really because US news sources seem to be taking a very different line (basically propaganda) on the War from non-US sources, and Google had an opportunity to provide a more balanced and informed view by giving equal weighting to international news sources. Politics aside, US news tends to be very focused on the US. I was amazed at how difficult it was to find out what was going on in the world when I was on Holiday in Florida.
There sure is, I've been thinking about it for a couple of weeks. It's what others have and Google doesn't, that Google could do better.
I get Breaking News headlines by opted-in email notification from one newspaper (have to sign up to see it) and two major TV networks. Either the browser crashes altogether from the bloated pages on the TV news sites, or the pages load so slowly it takes forever and it's really not much more than a blurb or references. I stopped bothering to even try.
What I do if something looks interesting is pop a search term right into the toolbar and find the story at Google to read. I never even use those sites except for the notification, I head straight to Google anyway.
What I'd love is for Google to have opt-in email notification of important news stories, possibly with a choice of areas of interest preference. It wouldn't have to be "breaking news" of major impact, just the latest of the day would do.
Not only would it be a convenience for subscribers, it would give Google additional data about what people were most interested in and possibly demographic information they could use in a number of ways.
Oh ya, a Zeitgeist of the most viewed news stories or most subscribed-to categories would be interesting, maybe even a recap by mail of what people considered important. I can see definite possibilities for innovation, not to mention that it would be pulling people in and give added audience if AdWords were running that were appropriate.
SlyOldDog... I have several news sites that I routinely link to many other news sources, but don't even consider Yahoo anymore. Their links may be good for 2 weeks - or 15 minutes, you never know. (Foxnews, BBC and others archive their stories for months at the same URL)
>Pop a search term right into the toolbar and find the story at Google.
Marcia... I find this to be the most powerful feature of Google News! I agree that their selected headlines are not that greatest, but if I enter a topic in the Google News Search, it finds TONS of related articles, and prioritized by most-recent at the top.
(and for those that haven't used Google News 'Search' feature, this is a search for 'News Articles Only'... not a mix of 3,083,324,652 web pages that simply relate to the search term).
