Google news goes local

BANGALORE: Google News, still in the beta stage, has launched five services in UK, India, New Zealand, Canada and Australia.

Google's news service monitors 4,500 on-line news publications through a computer program, which, according to Google, eliminates the chance of a human bias.

Despite the launch of the new country-specific services, Google News remains a beta version and work is still in progress. Google has said that the transition from the beta version will be smooth and that users will not even feel the change.

Google has said that its new initiatives are aimed at providing more country-specific news and stories of a more local flavor. Google News was launched in December 2000.