The News Industry and Search Engines – Two camps emerge

Google has unveiled 'The Living Stories' prototype, a project in conjunction with The New York Times and The Washington Post.  It explores a new way to get news to the masses online, which Google hopes other publishers will want to exploit with them too. The central concept is that particular news topics could be centralised under a single URL, updating in real time or near real time, to reflect what's happening out there and how the respective subject, issue or story is evolving. Whilst these pages currently live on the Google domain, they will be migrated over to The New York Times and The Washington Post early next year. Pages include one about Health Care, Global Warming and other major topics. 
 
Google has essentially found a way to try and bring publishers on-side by offering them free search engine optimisation (SEO), and what in his view, would appear to be a win-win situation for all involved.
 
This marks a significant collaboration between Google and some major heavyweights in the publishing industry. It is immediately very different in substance and sentiment from the Murdoch media empire's cynicism with regards to Google and how it is an unwelcome entrant into its business, going as far as expressing the desire to move to a paid model, partnering with Bing and exiting its content from Google's index entirely.
 
Of course only time will tell of which approach will gain the most traction.