Google News wins at the Webby Awards

[John_Caius]

Many people have been impressed by the quality of the new Google News section and it has now triumphed at the Webby Awards, beating strong competition from BBC News Online.

[webbyawards.com...]

[lazerzubb]

Yeah it also won the people's choice award for Technical Achievement.

[takagi]

Didn't see it before on news.google.com, a link to Google News named Best News Service [google.com]. That page also has a picture of the 'Google News Team' (is GoogleGuy there too?)

[quote]We are proud to be recognized with the 2003 Webby for the Best News Service.quote]

[GoogleGuy]

Hee hee. Wish I were as thin as those two people on the right of the picture.. :) Congrats to the news team--they've done a fantastic job.

[skipfactor]

Stick people--LOL. Google deserves an award for Best Corporate Sense of Humor. Nuts!

[bolitto]

I didn't know google was actually in the news biz on a level to compete with the BBC or MSNBC....as far as I'm concerned it's an electronic news compilation,not a news source.

Google does not have reporters or editors to be considered a news outlet, IMO.

[IITian]

>Google does not have reporters or editors to be considered a news outlet, IMO.

Agree. I tried out for Google news a few days but I think I am going to stick around with human editors. Humans do it better. (Haven't I heard this before? ;))

PS Once in a while I check Google out just to see which news is circulated the most, but I don't read the news.

[Mohamed_E]

> Humans do it better.

IITian,

May I assume that you use DMOZ for searching the Internet?

One thing I love about both Google News and the BBC is that they load fast. That allows me to get a quick look at what, if anything, is happenning right now.

When I have lots of time I read the NYTimes, but it is painfully slow on a dialup connection.

[chiyo]

well the award was for the best news *service*, not source. Im pretty sure you wouldnt need original content to qualify. There are very few original news sources on the net. The great majority reprint newsagency wires from AFP, Reuters etc. And many newspapers just reprint their print content online.

Im guessing googles competitors here would be places like yahoo, av and ATW news, newsisfree, rocketnews and lots of smaller "news" sites which aggregate news sources etc. One great thing about news.google is that it spiders so many sources, including niche ones published only on the web, in a very timely and user-friendly way.

[IITian]

Mohamed_E> May I assume that you use DMOZ for searching the Internet?

Normally I use Google to find something I need quickly but when I am doing some serious research when a cluster of related sites are needed to understand all the viewpoints, a directory structure works best for me. It is not only DMOZ, any directory organized well by people who really care about their subject matter. In fact, currently my favorite directory is a local directory with fewer than 1000 entries. I have spent hours on that.

In my view, Google's basic problem (and strength sometimes) is that its results are based on "popularity."

Regarding downloading speeding, I have found some of the alternative news website to be excellent with complete lack of bandwidth-hogging graphic ads and photo.

[mfishy]

I have done my fair share of "Google bashing" recently. I must say, however, that Google News is an awesome service. Actually, I find myself using it a bit too much :)

[skipfactor]

I gotta chime in: Eric Rudolph was captured 50 miles from here @ 4:00 AM. By 8:00 AM, Google News had almost 200 links to regional papers' Websites who scooped the majors with their level of local detail.

I know the town and using these sources, I was able to find out exactly the "store" where he was apprehended while dumpster-diving.

It was hours before CNN had this tidbit, and might have taken hours to find it manually.

Nonetheless, I think the addition of a "Breaking News" section would be a nice touch.

[berli]

Found this on the website that won the "Personal Web Site" People's Choice award:

[cockeyed.com...]

Googleguy perhaps?

:D