Broadband Developments

In browsing the GoogleBlog today I noticed a cool new project. It’s not all that flashy but I think it might be one of the most useful projects Google has ever undertaken. With all the hoopla lately about newspapers being dead in their current form, this flows perfectly to updating the way the world gets its news. Google is said to be starting with only old newspapers, likely to avoid any copyright issues. With how stubborn traditional print media companies have been Google probably views this as a neat proof of concept.

Personally, I haven’t bought a hard-copy newspaper in nearly 10 years! I get all my news from the web in print, audio or video. While there’s something satisfying about the tangible nature of a newspaper I just don’t see it outweighing the benefit of instant access, portability and time to print of online. That’s not to mention the green issues around not killing millions of trees for newspapers.

Back in school I often used newspaper articles as reference material. Going to the library and requesting a few dozen newspapers was tedious and often they were “missing” some that I needed. I LOVE the idea of being able to access this information anywhere, anytime. It’s good to see Google getting back to doing something good for society. Even if they update old news with new ads, the balance still tips in their favor.

Go GOOG!