As Yahoo Inc. editors plan updates this week to their popular online news service, a computer program at Google Inc. tirelessly scours the Web for items to display on the company's competing news site.
Few endeavors highlight the differences between Yahoo and Google -- two of the most popular destinations on the Internet -- more than their approach to news.
Although Yahoo News is the most visited news site by U.S. Web surfers, Google News is one of the fastest growing, setting the stage for the Digital Age equivalent of an old-fashioned newspaper war.
At stake are potentially billions of dollars in advertising revenue as the rivals race to add services to their core search engines to keep visitors clicking on their sites.
Yahoo, Google and other online "news aggregators" are "both threat and opportunity," said Gordon Borrell, president of Borrell Associates, a news industry consulting firm. "They're a threat to the current news franchise, and they also have a very interesting and popular way of doing business."
The redesigned version of Yahoo News will let users conduct Internet searches by clicking on words in a story and send articles to friends via Yahoo Messenger. It will also allow people to subscribe to regular updates, known as RSS feeds, from websites that offer them and to browse more quickly through headlines from the big news agencies that partner with Yahoo. The goal is to showcase the stories that Yahoo editors have selected from its partners, a Yahoo executive said.
Google takes a different approach, one that has drawn applause from some media firms but criticism -- and a lawsuit -- from others. Unlike Yahoo News, America Online Inc.'s AOL News and most other news aggregators, Google doesn't strike deals to run news material on its website. Instead, its software scours more than 4,500 sites -- selected by Google employees -- for photos, headlines and stories, then posts them in categories on Google News.
Google News doesn't include ads yet, and it's still in "beta" mode, which is geek-speak meaning it's not ready for prime time. But the Internet giant brags that its computers make editorial decisions long made by humans.
The Google method has drawbacks. Websites promoting white supremacy and anti-Semitism have slipped into news results, drawing criticism before Google removed them. And some media companies have objected to Google's use of their material.
