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Google News Crosses the Hurdle of Beta Testing After More Than Three Years

January 24, 2006

Yesterday, Google News emerged out of its Beta testing period ever since it was launched more than 3 years ago. Google News added some more advanced search features to its news site.

Google News first went live in September 2002 and has been available in a beta version until now. The site aggregates news stories from around the Web and groups them in clusters of articles that fall under a particular topic.

Starting Monday, users have the option to sign up for customized news headlines through a new feature called Personalized Search. If a user signs up for Personalized Search, Google News will recommend headlines based on news stories a user has read in the past. Recommended headlines will appear whenever a user signs in to his or her Google Account. These results will appear in the left column of Google News, but users also can get a full page of recommended stories by clicking on the section in which they are interested.

Google also has added a feature that displays the most popular recent stories on whatever edition of Google News the user is viewing.

Source: InfoWorld