LAT: Yahoo, Google Go with Different Angles in News Audience Competition

[DeepModem Mom]

Web Giants Go With Different Angles in Competition for News Audience
Yahoo licenses feeds of stories while Google's software finds, selects and links to articles.

By Chris Gaither, Times Staff Writer


As Yahoo Inc. editors plan updates this week to their popular online news service, a computer program at Google Inc. tirelessly scours the Web for items to display on the company's competing news site....

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The redesigned version of Yahoo News will let users conduct Internet searches by clicking on words in a story and send articles to friends via Yahoo Messenger. It will also allow people to subscribe to regular updates, known as RSS feeds, from websites that offer them and to browse more quickly through headlines from the big news agencies that partner with Yahoo. The goal is to showcase the stories that Yahoo editors have selected from its partners, a Yahoo executive said.

Google takes a different approach, one that has drawn applause from some media firms but criticism — and a lawsuit — from others. Unlike Yahoo News, America Online Inc.'s AOL News and most other news aggregators, Google doesn't strike deals to run news material on its website. Instead, its software scours more than 4,500 sites — selected by Google employees — for photos, headlines and stories, then posts them in categories on Google News.

Google News doesn't include ads yet, and it's still in "beta" mode, which is geek-speak meaning it's not ready for prime time. But the Internet giant brags that its computers make editorial decisions long made by humans....

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Newspapers' online operations generated $1.2 billion last year, or about 3% of the industry's overall revenue, according to a survey published last month by Borrell Associates, which is based in Portsmouth, Va. Though offline dollars still dwarf online dollars, the study found that the Internet accounted for nearly 45% of the industry's growth last year....


http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-news11apr11,0,6985808.story?coll=la-home-business

[w4rma]

1. Google does need to let the papers show their ads through their system. nt