Wikipedia Entries Show Up in Google News Results

Google is, apparently, experimenting with adding Wikipedia entries to its Google News results, as some users report being shown links to Wikipedia among the ones from traditional news outlets. This may be a big move for the service, but it may be of an even greater importance to the Internet as a whole, for, up until now, Google News has only used articles from established news sources or blogs and has steered away from collaborative user-generated content like Wikipedia.

There is no official announcement from Google, but it has confirmed that it is experimenting with the feature. “Currently, we’re showing a small number of users links to Wikipedia topic pages that serve as a reference on current events,” Gabriel Stricker, a spokesman for Google, told Zachary M. Seward of Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab.

The reason why this might be an important change is that, in a way, it would acknowledge the value of user-generated content and can be seen as a vote of confidence from Google. Wikipedia has become a very important tool in recent years and is the main source of information for many. It has managed to accumulate its vast array of knowledge based on a very large number of contributing editors, but the fact that anyone can edit that information can be seen as its major weakness too, and, as such, Wikipedia has been discarded as an unreliable source of information by the established scientific or journalistic groups.

However, the fact that Google is thinking about adding Wikipedia articles in its Google News results doesn't mean that it is introducing it as an alternative to the other news sources, but rather as a tool supplementing the usual news articles. A Wikipedia entry can bring a much more detailed accounting of the news from a number of different sources, or can provide additional or background information. Still, Google may decide to remove the feature if it proves unpopular, as it has made no official commitment yet.