Wow. Some 1,219 days after its debut, Google News has no “beta” tag on its English-language versions. Google News creator Krishna Bharat talks about the development on the Google Blog.
Google News has been a significant force in reshaping how people
consume news. It helped move us into a world where, increasingly,
people rely on many sources as part of their news diet, rather than
just relying on a small handful of favorite media brands. (Traditional
publishers may not appreciate that, but it was an inevitable part of
the evolution of media.)
Speculation is, now that Google News is out of beta, it will begin including advertising (contextual text ads from Google’s AdWords program). Rafat Ali,
who reported on this development for PaidContent.org, wrote: “Three
years ago, if Google tried that, it would have created some controversy
among the content providers. … Now, post-Topix, RSS etc., it
probably won’t generate as much heat.”
