Now we all know that Google has had its fair share of failure and successes, and not everything that it touches turns to gold. Sometimes projects just don’t work out like how they intended. The latest one to get the ax is Google’s newspaper archive service.
Started five years ago, Google’s plan was to have the world’s major newspapers and magazines digitally archived to make them easily searchable. And now, 5 years later, and after over 2,000 publications from as far back as 200 years ago, Google has decided to give up on the project. No reason was given to why Google stopped the project, but there are speculations about copyright issues. Personally I find the whole task extremely daunting and it would require extremely dedicated people to carry out.
Regardless of what the reasons are, Google has been kind enough to keep the archive online – all the scanned pages from those 5 years will still be available to the public but no more content will be added to it. Google is now shifting its focus to helping newspapers make money from their online presence with Google’s One Pass System.