A group of online publications has opened up its archives to Google’s web-crawlers, the company said Wednesday, allowing it to index old articles for a new service called Google News Archive Search.
The service retrieves links to articles for historical keywords, and sorts them into timelines. Some of the search results link to “pay-per-view� articles, but Google won’t collect the fees.
Newspapers such as the Washington Post, as well as news aggregators, like the Dow Jones’ and Reuters’-owned Factiva, show up in archive search results, but none of the media companies pays for placement in archive searches.
Nor does Google pay the companies for their articles, says Google Content Partnerships director Jim Gerber. “We include their content with their approval, but it’s not a monetary arrangement, and there isn’t even a contract,� he says. If a linked article costs money, it will say “subscription� or contain a price such as $2.95 in the search result.
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