At a time when newspapers -- led by News Corp.'s (NYSE:NWS) Rupert Murdoch -- are blasting Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) for poaching their content, the search giant has developed something that may greatly help the struggling industry.
Google Living Stories is an experiment with the New York Times (NYSE:NYT) and Washington Post (NYSE:WPO) that aggregates stories by topic:
Each story has an evolving summary of current developments as well as an interactive timeline of critical events. Stories can be explored by themes, significant participants or multimedia. … Updates to the story are highlighted each time you come back, and older news is summarized.
I like the way the pages are presented, and they're far more useful than my trying to find information the "old-fashioned" way. Google is hosting the pages for the time being, but they'll eventually live on the newspapers' websites.
Try out a couple of topics … say, health care or the Washington Redskins. Do you find this useful? Would you be more likely to visit a newspaper's website that uses Living Stories? Should Murdoch and competitors like Gannett (NYSE:GCI) and McClatchy (NYSE:MNI) breathe easier? Let me know what you think in the comments box below.
