Internet search leader Google Inc is teaming up with the New York Times and the Washington Post in an attempt to help out the ailing newspaper industry.
The new project, called “Living Stories,” debuted on Tuesday in the experimental “labs” section on Google’s Web site.
The service is supposed to make it easier for readers to follow evolving news stories. It will package stories from both the Times and the Post so the coverage can be more easily updated to include new developments.
PHOTO: AFP
Some of the initial topics featured on the service on Tuesday included healthcare reform, executive pay and the Washington Redskins football team.
Google isn’t paying the newspapers to feature the content, and there aren’t any immediate plans to sell advertising alongside the material, said Josh Cohen, a Google product manager overseeing the project.
Still, Google thinks Living Stories can help newspapers adapt to a shift that is causing millions of people to get their news from online sources instead of print. That’s a huge problem for newspapers because they make most of their money from ads appearing in print.
As print advertising has been crumbling, some newspaper publishers have lashed out against Google, which is based in Mountain View. They depict Google as a leech that has profited by showing snippets of their online stories and photographs.
Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corp, has been among the most outspoken critics.
He has even threatened to block Google from listing News Corp’s publications, including the Wall Street Journal, in its search index.
The New York Times, though, regards Google as an ally, according to Martin Nisenholtz, who oversees the newspaper’s online operations.
“We have a very successful, significant relationship with Google,” Nisenholtz told investors and analysts on Tuesday at a media conference in New York.
Separately, Google on Tuesday released a version of its Chrome Web browser for Macintosh computers in a challenge to Safari software Apple offers users of its machines.
“We took a hefty dose of goodness from the Windows version to build a fast, polished browser for Mac,” software engineers John Grabowski and Mike Pinkerton of the Google Chrome team said in a blog post.
Late last year Google released a Chrome browser for personal computers running on Windows software made by technology rival Microsoft, which promotes its own Internet Explorer browsers.
The Macintosh version of Chrome is in “beta,” or test, mode and does not yet have customization features such as allowing extension programs or bookmark management, the engineers said.
Google on Tuesday also released a beta version of Chrome for computers running on open-source Linux operating systems.
Linux and Windows compatible versions of Chrome could be customized with features such as mini “extension” programs.
“We hope the betas for Mac, Linux and extensions were some of the things on your wish list this year,” Google product manager Brian Rakowski said in a blog post.
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