The world according to Google

World View: Since it was introduced in 1999, the Google Internet search engine has swept all before it to become the most used in most parts of the world. It now searches over 3.5 billion web pages in response to a query, rank-ordering results in an easily accessible format.

As the invention of two Princeton university graduate students, it is also a celebrated and paradigmatic story of our time. They found a way to link up websites using computer algorithms (defined as the solution of any given task by a defined number of necessary sequential steps). The precise formula they use is still secret. Recent suggestions that the company might be floated on the web rather than through an investment bank made the lead story in the international financial press, valuing it at a possible $25 billion.

For anyone in the information business, indeed for citizens everywhere, Google and other search engines such as AltaVista or AllTheWeb have made revolutionary changes in rapid access to worldwide sources. For journalists and all who follow current affairs, an additional bonus has been available for just a year now - the Google news service. I am surprised to find not that many journalists know about it or use it regularly.

So it is worth passing on the information about it to readers, who have just as much to benefit, even if, like myself, they are still very much amateurs with this new medium.

Google News (http://news.google.com) is an extraordinary application of the technology to some 4,500 news web sources around the world. It ranks news stories according to its mathematical formula measuring the interlinkages between websites, not by any human editorial judgment. It presents them in chronological order, saying when they arrived, so that the service is continually updated.

Websites that track and evaluate news sites (such as www.newsknife.com) report that Google News picks up "the top two stories of the moment" some 59-63 per cent of the time, compared to around 77 per cent for CNN and Yahoo! News, which offer a similar running service. This function, then, is not Google's strongest point. Rather, the sheer diversity of its news sources impresses the newcomer. It offers alternative perspectives on the news from US, UK, Australian, Dutch, Spanish, French or German perspectives - in English and 23 other languages. This means the user has available immediately the major and minor media in these countries and languages on running events.

On any big story, such as the running violence in Iraq, Google will typically provide reports filed in the last few minutes, backed up by hundreds of different sources for the last few hours. Its data bank goes back 30 days.

Often these will be repetitive, including reports from the major news agencies such as Reuters and AFP, on which many of the running news sites rely for much of their breaking news. But they will also list the major newspaper and broadcasting websites, giving extraordinary and immediate shortcuts to the major sources of news on the web.

Any subject or writer can be searched in the archives of these 4,500 news sites, using Google's powerful technology. Thus one can go beyond conventional accounts of the news to more specialised or alternative ones. This is liberating for those frustrated by the increasing standardisation of news sources in a globalised world.

A search for stories neglected by the mainstream media, or those which concern readers and viewers in other parts of the world, is equally possible. For example, a search for federal solutions in Sri Lanka this week threw up 83 sources, mainly in Asian English language websites. Those who wish to follow events in East Timor, Poland or Brazil will find the facility equally useful. If you are interested in a politician's social policies or in how the EU's constitutional treaty is being covered in French, Spanish or German media, this is the most effective shortcut available. An advanced search facility can further refine such inquiries.

There are some reservations, of course. While Google News is an immediate reference point for running news, it cannot substitute for agencies such as Reuters and AFP in providing it for newspapers. Dedicated news channels such as The Irish Times's ireland.com, RTÉ, BBC or CNN are more consistent and focused.

There are some concerns that the Google technology is distorted by the growing worldwide blogger movement (short for web-loggers), in which so-called bloggers often discuss an article or website, providing a link, and thereby stimulating the search engine's interest. Pointing this out in the current issue of the NUJ's The Journalist, Steve Mathieson mentions that Google bought Blogger.com, one of the main firms providing services to bloggers. This movement is another liberation for the individual reader from established news sources, and is at its most stimulating when offering a critique of them.

Another point to notice is that Google tends to avoid pay sites such as ireland.com; certain other web resources such as libraries are not indexed through Google, because of the way their sites are structured. Other sites such as AltaVista have much longer archives to draw upon. Such issues are covered in a dedicated website, (www.searchenginewatch.com).

Newspapers and other media provide a window on the world by selecting what to cover and highlight. It makes much sense now that the technology is available to multiply sources and find greater diversity by using tools such as Google News.

This is not the only such miraculous facility becoming available free on the Internet. One of the latest is at amazon.com, the online bookseller, which allows the reader to search the texts of 125,000 books for particular phrases or themes, with page references and quotations.