Google News: Beta Not Make Money

As search engines go, Google does seem to have the Midas touch with their Web based success. Well, not every project they partake in turns to gold though. According to Wired News, their News-engine is not churning out support for itself financially.

When Google launched its news site three years ago, it led to a certain amount of hand-wringing at Yahoo News, MSNBC and CNN. Unlike its competitors, which were forced to budget millions of dollars a year to license up-to-the-minute content and pay reporters and editors, Google had figured out a way to do it on the cheap.

By relying on algorithms, Google News completely automated the news-gathering process. High-speed computers sift through some 7,000 sources of information — 4,500 of them in English — and determine which are the most relevant articles. They then grab the headline and first paragraph to post on Google’s news page, with the headlines acting as external links.