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San Francisco (pte032/21.06.2005/12:58) - Google, one of the most popular and most-visited search engines on the web, is investing millions of dollars and hundreds of staff hours into becoming the first search engine to sort not only for news and information but also for articles for their veracity.
The US$80-billion company is developing a patent that ranks news stories for accuracy and reliability, as well as topicality.
Part of Google's company policy is that its staff be allowed to allot one fifth of their time to their own projects. From this grew Google news, which links 4,500 sources from all over the world and is now used via internet by traditional media giants.
In its seven years of operation Google has become more than a popular search engine. The company now sees itself as expanding into the media sector.
Jim Hedger, search engine optimisation manager of the Canadian company Stepforth, says: "Google is in the midst of sweeping changes to the way it operates".
"(Google) isn't really a search engine in the fine sense of the word anymore ... It is more of an institution, the ultimate public-private partnership," he commented after the patent was posted.
But the company says that it is only trying to help is users to access and navigate the mass of information on the web. But some have commented that Google is trying to 'filter' information through the Google lens and fear that it may have cultural implications.
The French reaction, as usual, was anti-American. In an article written for Le Monde about Google's digitising 15 million books from the world's major public libraries to put on the web, head of the French National Library, Jean-Noel Jeanneney called the plans "confirmation of the risk of crushing American domination in the way future generations conceive the world".
Whatever it does, says Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch, Google will come under criticism. "The technology already makes quality judgments on things all the time - that's the nature of a search engine," he said.
And however Google is judged, the company isn't resting on its laurels but pushing information technology to its limits.
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