It may not seem like it, but Google News has had a decent, decade-long run. The online news aggregate service from the Mountain View, California-based company celebrated its 10-year anniversary on September 22.
Google News is now available in 30 languages, utilizing over 50,000 news sources for its content that reaches one billion unique visitors a week.
Google launched Google News on September 22, 2002, and in celebration of the 10-year mark, detailed the growth of Google News in a blog post on the official Google Blog.
Google News was originally launched as a response to what Google calls "widespread interest in news after the September 11 attacks." It turns out the tech giant was so compelled by the varying accounts, that it decided that an aggregate news source, utilizing Google's powerful search algorithms and popularity, would be a good forum for information.
"Linking to a diverse set of sources for any given story enabled readers to easily access different perspectives and genres of content. By featuring opposing viewpoints in the same display block, people were encouraged to hear arguments on both sides of an issue and gain a more balanced perspective," said the blog post.
A list of the most popular Google News headlines for each year since its launch shows that political news, such as the War in Iraq, the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Bhutto, and Barack Obama's election dominated. Still, Hurricane Katrina (which can be considered a highly political event in itself) and other stories like the BP oil spill were highly sought after in some years also.
At the end of the post Google stresses its awareness of the changing "online news landscape," and that it hopes to continue "to bring you the news you want, when you need it, from a diverse set of sources."
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