Google has had its share of success and failures, but the latter has had the quantity in the list. it has shut down a number of services and the recently added to the list was the Google News Archive Search which has gone missing since last week. This means Google will no longer continue its service to the users. Earlier, one could access it at news.google.com/archivesearch.
This archive search was useful for those users who wanted to look out for news which have been older than 30 days. Usually many such articles have been under the Google News coverage. Now for the access to such articles, one will have to take up the burden on their own shoulders, as looking out for these articles without the home page of Google News will be a hassle.
Since Wednesday, last week, if one would try accessing Google News Archives URL, they would be redirected to Google home page. However, later on the redirecting page was Google News advanced search page. Another point of surprise was that there is a disappearance of even the Google News Archives’ help pages. It was earlier accessible at news.google.com/archivesearch/help.html.
The Archive Search, however is no real shock as the search engine giant had made an announcement earlier that the respective service might be pulled off. Search Engine Land was told by Google that one would be able to access the material, but there would not be any additions to the collection. The quote made by Google was as follows:
Users can continue to search digitized newspapers at http://news.google.com/archivesearch, but we don’t plan to introduce any further features or functionality to the Google News Archives and we are no longer accepting new microfilm or digital files for processing.
The doors are not completely shut, but the task is hard now as without Google News Archive search’s home page, looking out for a material would be an uphill task. The alternate option which now the users can use is Google News advanced search page. They can do it with the help of a date range. After that, one can select the “Archives” option which appears in there. A screenshot below shows where would the “Archives” option can be found.
This is not the first time that Google has abandoned a service and have redirected them to the Google search page. In June, the search engine giant abandoned the Uncle Sam interface. However, later on Google told SEL that they do apologize to the users for not having an accurate communication in advance for the redirection of that service to google.com. But the history repeats yet again and no indication was given this time too. Google services have been used by users all over the world extensively and even a small service has users in thousands at least. Gary Price of SEL was of the view that Google could have given an advance notice which could have come out even a few hours before the removal, which would not have been that frustrating for Google users.
For confirmation however a postscript was available which was posted on 19th August,2011 which noted that the redirection was not a bug, but in fact Google had removed those services.