:: MIS Insights ::

Google is now offering its search services for news archives. From the Google’s mouth:

News archive search provides an easy way to search and explore historical archives. Users can search for events, people, ideas and see how they have been described over time… Search results include both content that is accessible to all users and content that requires a fee.

Though according to BusinessWeek, Google won’t get any payments for offering the service. Whatever prices the articles fetch, the article providers get all of it.

There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch
I don’t have anything against Google - not a day goes by without me using Google. It has made information (and sadly, trash) from the web more accessible. So, thanks, Google! However, hearing the “free service” on the part of Google makes me wonder, is it really free? From my Economics 101 class a few years back, Mr. Cielito Habito told us that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. There has to be something in it for Google…

• Ads. Most of online news websites survive or thrive by selling ad space over the internet. After taking Google’s News Archive Search for a ride, I found out that around 3 out of 5 results had Google Ads in the site. If the site didn’t have any Google Ads, there’s a high probability of the in-site search being powered by Google. Leave it to Google to increase the visibility of their products.
• Quasi-Portal. Unlike Yahoo! and MSN whose portals push content to the customer, Google is doing everything to make their services do the opposite - Google wants the customer to pull content. Following the “Customers want everything Customized” principle, this makes the Google user experience more attractive than the others. Hell, I even stumbled upon Google Alerts this morning while I was checking this service out!
• Libraries. If Google proves successful in this service, the mastery they will get out of this free service will allow them to charge for their services on government and university libraries in the future. Imagine the prospects of digitization and archiving of all the old news stored in microfilm. Think of how much aid this can be for students and researchers.

I don’t mean to sound sarcastic nor do I intend to sound like a Google-fanboi. However, the ability to harness data into meaningful information is something that has made Management Information Systems a real reality today. My mornings are dedicated to reading magazines, informative blogs and online gazettes. If Google News works the way it was intended to be, then my daily “Connect-the-dots” routine will be a lot easier, if not faster to accomplish.