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The front page of the new test site at lets users browse the latest headlines in world news, business, entertainment, technology and sports. There is also a section labelled US news, although this appears to include general political news from the US as well as the UK.
Users who enter single terms or phrases into the search pane will see links to articles taken from around 100 English language publications over the past week. Google trawls the Web sites hourly for the latest news.
As well as well known sources like the BBC, the Guardian, CNN and the Washington Post, the site also draws news from Asian and African publications and Web-only resources like Nando Times. The site also includes headlines from The Irish Times breaking news section on Ireland.com.
Google said it would consider suggestions for additional news sites that users want to see included in the news search. The company also plans to update the index of stories more frequently as the service develops.
The fledgling site uses grouping technology based on a mathematical algorithm, which lets related stories be grouped together automatically. Multiple stories from London newspapers about tax cuts in the UK, for example, are grouped under the same heading.
Google said its aim was to give users the opportunity to see how different news sources are covering the same story, but said it is seeking feedback from users on whether they find the grouping useful or not.
The company also stressed that the listing of headlines that appears on the news site's front page is generated automatically, and said that no human editors were deciding which stories are given top placement.
Google is currently the eighth most popular Web site in the US according to figures from Web measurement firm Nielsen/NetRatings, ahead of Ebay, Ask Jeeves and Excite. Jupiter Media Metrix also ranks Google as the number one search site in Europe, and says Google is posing a real challenge to the search tools at portal Web sites. Four-year-old Google has earned strong loyalty among Internet surfers for its speed and accuracy.
Last week the company faced down possible legal action from a Scientology group that said Google was violating its copyright according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Google later said that while certain pages of the Xenu.net Web site have now been removed from Google, the remainder of the site has been restored to the search engine.
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