Google put speed ahead of accuracy three years ago - and we're all paying the price

Here we go. Following on from my last post, it seems that Google has been including non-Google News posts in the “In the News” box for three years:

Google has confirmed that new “In The News” box appearing in some of its search results now lists content from more than just the traditional news sites. Discussions at Reddit, blog posts, videos and more from non-news sites may turn up.

The whole point of Google News is to be an authoritative, trustworthy subset of the main index. To abandon that in favour of the newest news is, clearly, prioritising freshness (or speed) over authoritativeness (or accuracy).

Or, as one person who responded to my link on Twitter put it:

Freshness uber alles.

— Spiked Underbelly (@clevertrope) October 3, 2017

And we’re all paying the price for that.