Google News has broken free from its temporal chains; no longer content to display search results from a measly month of prior news, the service has signed with a number of partners to offer news search extending back into early last century. According to PaidContent’s summary of the NYT coverage, sources include the Wall Street Journal, New York Times (to 1981), Washington Post, Time (full archives to 1923), Guardian Unlimited, Factiva, Lexis-Nexis, HighBeam Research and Thomson Gale. Some of the results will require payment to the source for access and there are no Google ads on the results pages. Regular search and timeline display options are available.
The results displayed so far seem limited and timelines are hard. A search for Iran Contra, for example shows results only from 1987 through 1992, thus excluding coverage of the alleged deal between Reagan and Iran in 1980 that unseated Carter from the presidency. It’s only a question of history, though, there’s no need to get political. Almost every result for that search requires payment for access anyway.
The official announcement should come on Wednesday, at which point the archive search option should be available from other pages on Google. For now though you can access it directly at news.google.com/archivesearch.
For another look at archival news search, see our recent coverage of Topix.net, which offers less history but more sources and a more usable timeline.
Finally! Atlast an interesting service again from Google.
This would be really useful to research and generate timelines. The revenue model would still remain “ads”, I guess
“ads”, ^_^
Haste makes (space) waste.
I missed reading that they offer access to “paid” content as well. BTW, it’d be nice to see this extended to other languages besides english.
Nice! That’s a very useful service. Very fascinating how far the search can go back in history.
This is amazing… Google are actually getting away with charging people “money for old rope”…
Looks like my article on Newsvine is starting to look more correct than I even dreamed about… (click here to read it)
How much coverage did that alleged Reagan/Iran deal get at the time, in 1980? It was my impression that that story didn’t emerge until years later, so you wouldn’t expect to find articles about it in 1980. (Although, I was born in 1982, so I don’t exactly have first hand memory of this).
A more annoying lapse that I found is that the earliest articles about the JFK assassination are dated 2-3 weeks after the event, therefore there’s nothing with the simple headline “JFK Assassinated” or deal with the initial reaction to the event.
And it gets spottier the further back in time you go. “Gettysburg” turns up all sorts of articles from the 19th century but none describing the battle that took place there.
Still, this is a fantastic service, it’s fascinating to search through history like this. Hopefully they’ll be adding to the archive as time goes on; I’d love a more complete record of 19th century newspapers (and even earlier, if they kind find them) since all that stuff is out of copyright anyway.
Great Archive, even for the Professional Journalist.
http://www.shop-worlds.com – Shopping Mall
This is pretty cool but you still have to pay for all the access, they dont give you anything for free. I have a Congoo Netpass installed in my browser and it will get you free access to many of these articles……My daily good deeed is done!
You can search past 1987 on your example…
http://news.goo...p;as_hdate=1986
But the timeline view is constrained.
I put up the wrong link…here it is…
http://news.goo...p;as_hdate=1986
Nice headline. 1923 isn’t even close to 100 years ago.
Kirk, see http://news.goo...8;as_hdate=1812
Some of the databases go back much further.
Wow ! This can only happen in Web 2.0.
I guess that search for “Iran Contra” would catch some of Gary Sick’s perverted conspiracy theories, at least articles debunking that crap.
I wonder if a search for “Osam bin Laden” would collect the State Dept’s 1996 warning to Bill Clinton that allowing Osama to move to Afghanistan would “give him an even more dangerous haven” for terrorism?
Keep the political cheap shots out of what is ordinarily a decently written blog.
Only 200 years of news?
Gary, I checked – the Bin Laden time line doesn’t start until ‘98!
Nice ..
Why don’t they just show some ads instead of demanding payment? Could it be because of some copyright issue?
…wow!!! This is a very interesting tidbit
I tried that congoo site and did a search for “Iran Contra”, here’s what I got:
http://www.cong...0Contra&s=0
If you download that netpass toolbar, you can get into the premium articles for free. See how this article has a barrier up before you get that netpass:
http://www.libr...a.aspx?num=3342
Now download that netpass and you can get in…thats pretty cool.
R
That’s really interesting….
Cheers!!
Jason S
I Blog at http://jsbi.blogspot.com
Realy great.
Yes , That’s really interesting…
Your blog is really cool and a lot of technology info.
I Blog at : http://technolo...og.blogspot.com
Cheers
Surendran