Arcane Gazebo

Also, Google News Categorization

Another problem with the Google News Sci/Tech section: I complained earlier about the preponderance of technology stories at the expense of science, but many of these aren't really stories about technology -- rather, they are stories about technology companies. "PeopleSoft to triple staff in India"? This stuff belongs in the Business section. Right now, I count:

• 5 stories about science (although the distant galaxy story is listed twice)


• 9 stories about technology


• 2 stories about business actions by technology companies


• 3 stories about legal actions by technology companies


• 1 story about politics (a Chinese political dissident who used the Internet)

So maybe the problem isn't that they need more categories, but that they need to get better at assigning stories to the existing categories. This may not be Google's fault -- they may be dependent on the sources for categorization, and, e.g., the New York Times technology section has the same problem.