This may be the crux of the matter:

Schmidt is distinctly aware of the newsprint meltdown going on in an information world dominated by his company, and that this system only works as long as there is someone to report the news that his system delivers to readers.

No doubt that is a big BIG [6]BIG[/6] deal for Google News. Also, with all the ruckus from the AP about needing compensation from websites that use AP content, it seems clear that print news must find a new business model or go extinct. With some savvy business moves, Google can be a part of that new model.

high-quality news content to users without them actively looking for it.

introducing the google telepathic search helmet; i could see charles xavier endorsing the product.

i think that they should focus more on covering new news, as i could find a lot more breaking content surfing directly to the news sites or, @ times, on social media.

I'm also not interested in the boo-hoo coming from print business models that are past their prime. There's no reason to complain because they can STOP providing their content for free whenever they want... but they never do completely.

edit: after i hit post it dawned on me that it doesn't matter how many billions big companies throw at the net to try and get a stranglehold on it because one thing never changes... us little webmasters continue to have the stranglehold on our smaller niches. People like visiting sites NOT mass produced by big business and I don't see that changing. I give credit to Google for being willing to try new things but I also believe the holy grail of web ideas is quite hidden and safe, perhaps forever.

[edited by: JS_Harris at 12:08 pm (utc) on April 30, 2009]

what's the problem ?

google will just end up PAYING a subscription to Reuters/AP/AFP/whatever like any other normal newspaper is doing since the rock age.

this way they'll not even need to link to the original articles, they'll have the rights to write the whole articles + photos.

actually you don't even need to subscribe to all those agencies, you can directly pay one single subscription to aggregators like DailyLife.com who offer also a nice set of APIs to automate the content retrieval.

By providing users with "the kind of news that interests them just by calling up Google’s page," how would we learn of the "important" news we should know, like 'Swine Flu'?

Kill the "trusted" media that flags-up the big national and international issues and we're left ignorantly submerged in our own niche worlds.

will bring high-quality news content to users without them actively looking for it

The defining line between content and spam gets ever thinner.

will bring high-quality news content to users without them actively looking for it

Sounds like what newspapers do. When I pick up a copy of the WIDGETVILLE POST, I'm not necessarily looking for a story about swine flu, a human-interest piece about a blonde Buddhist nun from Iowa who's teaching yoga to senior citizens, or a political op-ed piece by John Doe. Those things are "pushed" to me when I'm looking for something to read at breakfast.

Kill the "trusted" media that flags-up the big national and international issues and we're left ignorantly submerged in our own niche worlds.

So the choice is sensationalist reporting, often ill-understood by the overworked journo paid to sell volume rather than inform, versus informed but partisan opinions from people with vested interests.

But side-swiping aside, I think is can only be positive if G (or anyone) can keep paid-up journalists with actual editorial oversite publishing content for which they can be held accountable, rather than drowning in sea of propaganda and spin

>Kill the "trusted" media that flags-up the big national and international issues and we're left ignorantly submerged in our own niche worlds.

The NYT reporters who've been casually "inventing" supporting details to lend corroborative verisimilitude to an increasingly biased and unconvincing narrative, together with their ilk in the video broadcast media (Dan Rather, etc.), have already killed the "trust." All that remains is to bury it in some toxic waste dump where the stench of the rotting corpse won't be so noticeable.

All that remains is to bury it in some toxic waste dump where the stench of the rotting corpse won't be so noticeable.

...which can be turned into a landfill on which houses, with fiber optic connectivity to google news that serves us more mainstream spin, can be built for all ;) if we make them cheap enough we could solve the housing crisis.