Google on Tuesday added RSS and Atom functionality to Google News, its aggregated news service, allowing users to receive to content from via feeds, reported CNET and Internet News. Users can now subscribe to get feeds from seven subject areas designated by Google or can create customized news feeds or Google News alerts. Those who have created My Google personal start pages will be able to add feeds to those pages as well.
Google News aggregates news via links to stories on myriad websites and is available in 22 versions for audiences worldwide. For now, RSS and Atom feeds are available on six versions: the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the U.K. and India.
"We've launched this service because we've had a lot of requests from Google users to support RSS and Atom," a Google UK spokeswoman told ZDNet. Nathan Stoll, product manager for Google News, said there were no plans to show ads on main pages or search results, according to Internet News.
In April 2004, U.K. programmer Julian Bond received a cease-and-desist notice from Google after he scraped Google News headlines (which Google itself produces by scraping) and displayed them on another website.
