CNET (news.com) likes to boast that its 'News.com Extra' is "The Web filtered by humans, not bots." (Bots are computer programs that search the Internet for data.)
That's a daily criticism of Google News, which proclaims, "The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program." (Note to readers: computer programs are written by humans, not bots.)
D'you s'pose it's a conflict of interest when on Friday CNET posts an article with the subhead, "Google suffers black eyes in quest to best traditional newspapers with mathematical algorithms and robots." The article refers to newspapers, blogs, Yahoo, and by implication, CNET.
I didn't get the logic presented by staff writers Stefanie Olsen and Evan Hansen: Google lost a court case in France, therefore computer-culled news doesn't work well. Which human editor allowed the poorly thought-out article through the vetting process? Lessee, Yahoo lost a court case in France: that means that search engines don't work well. Or maybe their weather services are suspect. Something like that.
Rather than label Google News "perilous to news organizations [like CNET]," the two staff writers might have taken a less biased approach against their competitor. How about this angle: Google News is just another choice. (I read news on Yahoo, Google, CNET, The Register, and two dozen other computer and non-computer news sites every day.) I've noticed a change at CNET, beginning with the last American election when it ran political stories lacking technology content. (To prevent upsetting readers from the USA, I won't comment on the political party CNET prefers.)
Run by humans, CNET has the advantage of bad-mouthing competitors that don't have forums for retortion. At least bots don't hold grudges.
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