Google Inside

Google News has a recently implemented feature which has been too widely used yet, but is slowly making progress. Google News with Comments.

This comment is by someone from the government, “Comment by Vito J. Fossella (R-NY13), Member of Congress - Sep 10, 2007. This bill will address several key areas to help our heroes who are sick today as well as anyone who falls ill in the future as a result of 9/11.” This official kind of social networking is becoming more and more relevant in today’s society.

Looking at today’s social interaction and how active even government officials are, it’s very encouraging [to me]. So who is allowed to comment on these news stories? Right now, only the people that are actually mentioned in the article. This is a good precaution for Google to be taking.

From what I understand of the “news comment” system, someone must e-mail Google the actual comment and they must manually post it to the news article. It’s not like a blog where anyone and their grandma can post a comment.

It’s possible that Google will open it up to more people in the future, but right now it’s being very restrictive — for good reason.