SAN FRANCISCO — Today at the TechCrunch50 conference, Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google, announced Google’s plans to make
scanned newspaper archives searchable through Google News. Over 100 newspapers are available at the product’s launch today, Marissa told me in an interview after her session.
Google will give the majority of revenue accrued from Google AdSense on the archived pages to the publishers, according to Mayer. She didn’t disclose the exact percentage, but it will be a blanket percentage that doesn’t favor individual publishers.
Google developed an algorithmic solution for the archives that will jump right to a specific article in the paper, and related articles from other papers will be listed on the side of the page. The technology for scanning the newspaper archives is similar to that used for Google Books, Mayer says, so the layout of the page and the size of the headlines–which help give a story its historical context–will be preserved.
Below is Mayer’s stage presentation from earlier today, courtesy of CNET News.com
Update: Here is the New York Times report on Google’s newspaper initiative by Miguel Helft and Brad Stone.
Stay tuned to much more from Marissa and others from the TechCrunch 50 conference on Beet.TV
—Kelsey Blodget, Associate Producer
