India Abroad
10-11-2002
The Indian research scientist behind Google's latest innovation said he is
not trying to revolutionize journalism or put editors out of work -- he
only wants to make things simpler for people looking for news on the web.
Still, the Silicon Valley-based Internet search engine's new, entirely
computer-driven news portal (http://news.google.com) has some journalists
wondering if they will be replaced.
Without the aid of any human editors, the portal's front page automatically
updates itself every 15 minutes with hundreds of stories culled from around
the world. Stories are broken down into a format of topics, such as Top
Stories or Sports, similar to that of traditional news sites like CNN.com.
Krishna Bharat said the idea first struck him when the flood of information
on the Internet after the 9/11 terrorist attacks became too much for him to
wade through.
Eager to learn what had happened, he found himself sinking in the
time-consuming task of jumping from one news site to another, waiting for
them to load, then clicking through articles, pages and countless pop-up
ads.
What annoyed him further was that in his search for the news he was
interested in, he kept encountering the same articles reproduced from
syndicates and wires, like Associated Press, while going from site to site.
The 32-year-old research scientist decided to find a simpler way of getting
his news fix on the web.
"I wanted to automate the process [of searching for news]," he told India
Abroad in a phone interview from Google's headquarters in Mountain View,
California. "I wanted to gather all the articles in one spot."
Bharat went to work, writing a clustering algorithm (a mathematical
procedure which finds similarity between elements and groups them together)
that would match articles from many different sources, analyzing different
factors, such as an article's information, page rank, and timeliness.
The search program worked well enough that Bharat decided to share it with
his co-workers. Emails were sent around, praising its usability and
functionality. It worked well enough that Google's founders, Sergey Brin
and Larry Page, also started using it.
Google's executives felt that Bharat was on to something. "It was
consistent with Google's goal of organizing the information you find on the
web, and make it easy," Bharat said.
What began as his pet project quickly formed into a `beta' portal that was
first linked to the outside world in March, scouring 150 news sources an
hour.
This initial attempt was hidden away within the layers of the site as
Google cautiously tested the waters. Other search engines such as
AllTheWeb.com and AltaVista already had established news searches of their
own.
In order to compete, Google threw five engineers at the project. After
eight months, they had increased the program's search capabilities to crawl
through 4,000 news sources in real time every 15 minutes, posting 100,000
articles daily.
Unique to Google's news portal search is that it scans the full text of
articles, rather than just headlines, allowing it to analyze and group
stories according to complete content.
Unveiled on Google's main homepage as an added button for general
consumption in late September, the news portal received cautious praise
from the press.
`Meet Editor Al Gorithm,' headlined the Online Journalism Review in its
take on Google's computer-driven newsgathering.
Competitors tried to brush it aside. `News cannot be 100 percent automated
and present a meaningful picture of what is happening in the world,' Chris
McGill, director of news and information at Yahoo, told The Washington
Post.
Some mentioned possible legal issues if the portal were to monetarily
benefit from the content of other sites, and the possibility of cutting off
their site from the portal's searches.
Others pointed out bugs on its front page like the wrong categorization of
stories, or questioned the placement of some stories over others.
Bharat said the portal was still in `beta' mode and that Google was
analyzing all the feedback it received. He would not say what kind of
traffic the portal is getting, but he said it was "very satisfying."
Legally, he said, there had been no complaints, and maintained that the
search was compliant with copyright laws.
Addressing its critics, Bharat said there were initial "misunderstandings"
about the portal's purpose. "It was not intended to say that editors don't
have a role," he said.
"It's presumptuous to say this will be the future of journalism itself," he
continued. "But it will be part of the future of journalism. We tap
journalists to create our compendium, but that's not the last level. Others
will take [this portal] and build upon it."
Bharat said the portal provides exposure to small, local news sources that
otherwise would not be accessed, and culls both traditional and
non-traditional sources for news.
He gave the example of an earthquake. The portal would find reports from
news sites, but also articles from sources like the Disaster Relief
network. "Though they are not a news site, they might have a valuable
perspective to add," he said.
Bharat said his philosophy behind creating the search also had in mind
people who are not qualified as professional journalists, but have
"something fresh" to contribute.
"All together, whether it is a story or propaganda, you see what people
say. Whether it's National Geographic, or Time, all are different views.
It's less a question of objectivity, and more of diversity."
He explained that the computer search avoids bias by selecting all articles
that are determined relevant by the mathematical grouping, "not just what
[a human editor would] believe in."
The portal would benefit the media immediately, Bharat said, by increased
exposure to their news sites. With over 150 million unique visitors daily
to Google, he said, its news search would introduce new readers to sites it
linked.
Bharat said Google's news portal was also good for writers lacking
mainstream exposure. "We'll find you and put you up," he said
enthusiastically, musing the possibility of the portal becoming a syndicate
in the fashion of Reuters or AP for `small-time' journalists.
Such commercial applications were not wholly discussed when the product was
being developed But the idea of monetizing the efforts will be explored, he
said.
Not surprisingly, the passion for journalism wells beneath the exterior of
Bharat the enterprising scientist.
Though graduating with a PhD in computer science from Georgia Tech, the
Bangalore native said he wrote fiction as pastime, and articles for the
campus newspaper while earning a BTech from IIT-Madras.
An admitted news junkie at times, Bharat has tinkered with technology and
news delivery before, developing an interactive, personalizable newspaper
called the Krakatoa Chronicle using Java in 1994.
He laughs when it's mentioned. "That was my first experience in online
news," he said.
The father of one said he has nothing but the utmost respect for those in
the media, and said he still nurses a personal desire to write. "In a
second life, I would like to be a journalist," he said.
Article copyright India Abroad Publications, Inc.
V.XXX
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий