Google News has relaunched its service, and, as holovaty.com found out in an early preview, it does a pretty good impersonation of a traditional news portal. But this one is created automatically, using Google’s algorithms.

More details at ResourceShelf, and more analysis almost everywhere.

My initial thoughts:

• Great international news overview, but Google should offer to filter out duplicate versions of the same story carried by multiple sites (e.g., wire service or syndicated pieces).
• Should be interesting to see how news sites will react to this:
  • Google is practising the dreaded deep-linking, but Google is also driving traffic directly to the news sites, thus creating the potential for greatly increased page views.
  • The service will no doubt promote news sites that frequently update content. The result in the blog-o-sphere: google-bombing, how will news sites react? Will they publish original content more often?
• Google has even discovered the truth Western Canadians have known all along about The Globe and Mail: Google calls it the “Toronto Globe and Mail”

Two good little pieces on the craft of journalism, one our reliance on email, and another on how it relates to writing.