Google news takes historical turn

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San Francisco, Sept 6: Google Inc has added the ability to search through more than 200 years of historical newspaper archives alongside the latest contemporary information now available on Google news, the market-leading web search firm said.

“The goal of the service is to allow users to explore history as it unfolded,” said Anurag Acharya, a top Google engineer who helped develop the news archive search.

“Users can see how viewpoints changed over time for events, for ideas and for people,” said Acharya. Archive search instantly generates a timeline of stories on a particular subject over the years, allowing web surfers to target particular dates, or to observe how coverage of an issue has evolved over time.

As examples, he cited the 1969 Apollo moon landing or events with long histories such as the Palestinian conflict.

Starting immediately, users of Google news will find a news archive search link as an alternative to searching the wider web or zeroing in on breaking news. News articles in a number of other languages can also be uncovered, including Spanish. Users who are purely interested in historical comparisons can go straight into the archival search feature at http://news. google.com/archivesearch. When Google users search for certain terms on general Google search, historical links may also appear as part of Google’s standard search results.

Archival news links are clustered around themes and according to date in chronological order as far back as digital news sources exist–decades or even several centuries. Users may choose to search the archives of specific publications. Sources range from free news articles on ad-supported sites such as time.com and the Guardian or snippets of articles available for a fee or via subscription, from newspapers like The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post.

Results are based on relevance, with no favoritism shown to any of Google’s partners, officials said.