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News Corp is apparently working on a news app called 'Knewz'
News Corp wants to give people an alternative to Google News and Apple News. The media company that owns Dow Jones Newswires and HarperCollins is working on its own news aggregation service, reported The Wall Street Journal. The service will be called Knewz.com, and take the form of both a traditional website and a mobile app. It will draw from a variety of national outlets such as The New York Times and NBC News, as well as more partisan news sites like The Daily Caller and ThinkProgress.
Google aims for greater transparency on how it ranks news
As it has done with several of its products, Google is aiming for greater transparency about a core aspect of its services: news. It opened a website to detail its objectives, principles and approaches to managing news experiences across its various platforms.
German news publishers want Google to rip their content after all
At some point, we've all said no to an offer of help before realizing that some help would actually be rather useful. It's a situation that German news publisher Axel Springer has found itself in after spending months lobbying Google to stop indexing stories for Google News, it's now doing a U-Turn. As part of the original deal, Google pledged to only display the headlines from Springer's stable of sites, including Bild and Die Welt, while rivals would be shown with a thumbnail and a snippet of text. Unsurprisingly, without the extra content, people began to take their clicks elsewhere, causing Bild's traffic to drop like a stone with a weight problem. After a trial period, the publisher has decided that it'd really rather Google went back to indexing its stories after all. In a statement, boss Matias Doepfner admitted that the company had shot itself "out of the market," but threw a little shade at the search engine, saying that its power was simply too great to resist. [Original image credit: Nico Trinkhaus, Flickr]
Google strips down its news service to pacify German publishers
Google has a tumultuous history with the German publishing industry, which has long taken issue with the search giant's indexing of news stories. Starting next week, Google Germany will no longer display summaries and image thumbnails for news sourced from many local sites, leaving only headline links in their place.
Google News updated with enhanced Google+ integration, real-time coverage
The good news is we're still here -- luckily. On a lighter note, though, Google's sprinkling some new features on top of its headline-loving News page. Via one of its numerous blogs, Big G announced it is boosting the default size of news images on the front page, while also improving the Google+ integration within its discovery site. Now with the Plus enhancements you'll be able to check out what folks in your Circles -- and other "notable" people -- have to say about current topics, which includes comments inside the novel real-time coverage functionality on both the News homepage and social network. Unfortunately, these will only be available to those in the US when they start rolling out over the next week, and it's worth mentioning you'll be able to opt out should you choose to do so. In the meantime, you can head over to the Google News Blog to pore over all the final details.
Google News Archives stops digitizing old newspapers, picks great day to do it
Ain't like you'll be reading 'em anyway after today's over.
Google adds News Near You, reminds you that it's always watching
We can't say location-based services have the best reputation right now, but Google continues to crank them out regardless. The search giant introduced "News Near You," a feature that lets you search for news stories that are based around your current position. After pointing your Android or Safari browser to Google's news page and agreeing to reveal your locale, you'll find these customized stories in its own special category. We tried out the site for ourselves, and within a few seconds we were discovering new and wonderful things in our own neck of the woods. You can check it out, too, provided you don't mind Mountain View knowing exactly which bit of woods your neck happens to reside. [Thanks, vivek]
Acer to launch first Chrome OS netbook, Android-based Aspire One sales disappoint
Acer loves it some Google. And unless Google's trying to stamp out your revenue stream, who doesn't? Now Acer chairman, JT Wang, says that he expects to be first to market with an official Chrome OS netbook -- sometime in the second half of 2010 according to DigiTimes' sources. In fact, JT says that Acer's been working on a Chrome OS device since mid-2009. This despite admittedly weaker than expected demand for its dual-boot Android netbook, the Aspire One AOD250. Guess even the Google halo isn't enough to shoehorn its smartphone OS into a market dominating position on cheap ultra-portables. It's worth pointing out that DigiTimes' moles aren't saying anything new with the launch time-frame since Google's target for its gold Chrome OS build has been 2H of 2010 ever since the lightweight OS was announced. Not that the timing matters too much since we'll likely be seeing plenty of Chromium OS netbooks flooding the grey market long before the second half of 2010.
Google revamps mobile Google News format
Like most "mobile versions" of websites, Google News was simplified for use on devices featuring what Steve Jobs once called "the baby Internet." Sadly, this simplified version also showed up by default on the iPhone, leading to an experience that was, to put it charitably, subpar. That's all changed now that Google has redesigned the mobile version of Google News for iPhone, Android, and Palm Pre users. The new mobile version is far more feature-rich than the old one and is more consistent in its appearance (i.e., it's almost indistinguishable from the desktop version) compared to the old "mobile-optimized" Google News. It also includes a handy "Jump to" link which brings up a window that allows you to skip to the news section of your choice, saving your thumbs from severe scroll fatigue. There's no need to download anything. Simply go to Google News on your iPhone and check out the changes. [Via MacRumors]
