from Chuck0 March 21, 2003
Several days ago I issued a call on Infoshop News for people to email Google News (http://news.google.com/), asking that this popular search service index Infoshop News like it was doing several months ago. One of Infoshop News' many readers and supporters sent Google News an email and got back a response which is listed below. It has become apparent that Google News is inventing excuses to not index popular alternative news websites, including Infoshop News. Google News may claim that they offer access to over 4500 sources of news, but their policy in regards to Infoshop News indicates that popular alternative news websites need not be indexed.
Shortly after Google announced their fancy news service that was trumpeted as being put together by fancy computer programs, I sent them an email asking that Infoshop New be included in their indexing. After they responded that they couldn't because of "technical reasons," I replied with an email explaining Infoshop News and even provided them with the RSS/RDF file for the website (this is an automated syndicated newsfeed updated three times daily.) Google News started indexing Infoshop News and I assumed that this was still happening until I conducted several test searches on Google News a few weeks ago.
It's not clear that the response from Google printed below represents official Google policy. If it does, it would mean that Indymedia, as well as many other news websites and blogs on the web would not be indexed. Not only would this again reinforce the media monopoly, but Google users would lose access to the exciting phenomenon of independent news publishing on the Internet.
If you take this rejection letter seriously, there are several problems with it. First of all, the articles on Infoshop News are not all produced by one person. Secondly, we don't have any paid staff, but we feature original content and content from mainstream and alternative news sources. And as many Infoshop News regulars know, I serve very much as a staff editor for Infoshop News.
If you suggest Infoshop News and independent news websites like Indymedia, please send an email of support to: news-feedback at google.com <mailto:news-feedback at google.com>
If you are interested in signing a letter of support, if Google News continues their stubborness, please send me an email.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2003 23:35:35 -0800 (PST) From: daniel at wireforest.com To: chuck at mutualaid.org, chuck0 at infoshop.org Subject: Responce from Google
A user has entered feedback on the site! Their feedback is:
pasted below is the responce i received from google on my request for infoshop news to be included into google news. +++++++
Subject: Re: InfoShop News [#1882273]? View Full Header View Printable Version View Message details From: news-feedback at google.com? Date: Thu, March 20, 2003 6:50 pm? To: daniel at wireforest.com? Priority: Normal?
Hello Daniel,
Thank you for your suggestion. We have reviewed http://www.infoshop.org and we cannot include it at this time. We are not accepting sites where all articles are produced by one individual. We are looking for sources with current news written by a staff of reporters and edited by a staff editor. We will log your suggestion for future consideration should our constraints change.
Thank you for trying Google News and taking the time to write us.
Regards, The Google Team
Original Message Follows: ------------------------ From: <daniel at wireforest.com> Subject: InfoShop News Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2003 01:32:05 -0800 (PST)
I am writing to encourage your editoral team to include in the new Google news feature, (which I use quite frequently throughout the day) the news reports and services of infoshop.org
This is an informative, reliable, current, and important voice to be added and made available to your users. I think that Google users are a very diverse, educated and informed group of people, and the addition of INFOSHOP NEWS would be seen as a welcome and expansive improvement.
thank you for your attention on this. Daniel
-- Daniel Abell - WireForest daniel at wireforest.com