Internet search giant Google today launched an Irish division of its news site, which draws information from around 100 different news sources ranging from news websites to national and regional newspapers.
The new Ireland version of Google News is available at news.google.ie. “Effectively it’s an index of the most up to date Irish news sources,” a spokesman for the company told siliconrepublic.com. “Originally you had to search for Irish news stories and the information would have been gathered from a few specific Irish news websites such as RTE.
“What we’ve done is expanded it out to include regional newspapers online. It’s also intelligently linked to other Ireland-related coverage such as the BBC’s coverage of the peace talks, for example.”
Previously Google’s news service would have listed specific news genres such as ‘world’, ‘business’, and ‘entertainment’ but only now is there a specific ‘Ireland’ news service.
The Google spokesman explained the launch demonstrates Google’s commitment to investing in the local markets where it operates. There are now more than 30 editions of Google News in more than 10 different languages.
The spokesman added: “Google News Ireland uses the latest technology to help people keep up to speed with the day’s events and with the latest comment and analysis. It makes it easy to search for the same story on different news sources.”
Google currently employs 700 people in Dublin and last month announced plans to hire a further 600 people in a major expansion.
By John Kennedy
