Google has announced the launch of its long-awaited premium content service, Google News Archive Search. Google News Archive, as the name suggests, provides access to an archive of premium news and research content provided by companies such as Factiva, LexisNexis, Alacra, Highbeam Research, the New York Times and others, as well as free (ad-supported) content from Time.com and the Guardian.
Google News Archive Search can be accessed directly at http://news.google.com/archivesearch/. In addition, Google intends to include archived results along with some search results, but in my initial testing, it appears that feature may not have been launched yet. In addition to news, Alacra is providing credit, investment and market research from Fitch, CreditSights, Moodys, Investext and others.
The business model is straightforward: content providers can either sell their content pay-per-view or deliver a page with advertising on it. Google merely indexes the content, not taking any share of the revenue. At this time, Google is not running ads alongside the news archive.
Google News Archive Search should open up new opportunities for premium content providers to reach new audiences. Over time, as the content is integrated more closely with Google Search and Google News results, the opportunities should become even greater.
UPDATE:
Jarid Lukin, of Alacra, provides details on the various types of content Alacra has made available through Google News Archive.
Rafat has compiled more snippets and links about the launch.
Mitch Ratcliffe tries some obscure searches (e.g. the Boston Molasses Flood of 1919) with mixed results.
Nick Carr enthusiastically calls it "Arguably the single greatest research tool yet to appear on the web" while Steve Rubel, focusing on the free content wonders what the fuss is about and suggests that Topix.net is better.
(Note: While I agree that the new Topix site is fantastic, what's unique about Google News Archive is its combination of free and premium content. The name is a bit of a misnomer, as all types of dated content, such as credit and investment research and market research are also included).
I like googles new service but your blog implies some kind of free access and that is not the case. Google only provides links to premium content but there is no access provided at all. If you find an article that is accessable then its a free article to anyone. If you want free access, you can goto sites like Congoo or highbeam. Those site provide links to the article like google but also access to the article unlike google.
Just a thought.
Darby Ward
darbyward@yahoo.com
Posted by: Darby Ward | September 06, 2006 at 11:03 PM
I agree that Highbeam (and, to a lesser extent, Congoo) are good sources for free access to news content. Google News Archive (despite the name) goes further than that, providing access to premium content beyond news. There is investment and credit research, market research and other types of content which are not available for free elsewhere on the Internet. What Google offers is the convenience of its interface and "one stop shopping" to access a wide variety of content from many publishers. Where that content is also available for free on the web - go get it. But, for the premium content that is not freely available, I think this is a great starting place for your search.
Posted by: Barry Graubart | September 09, 2006 at 10:15 AM