Google Takes Print Archives Online

Google has announced that the company will endeavor to bring archives of printed news from around the world online.

If this sounds familiar to some of you, it’s because Google started working with several publications a couple of years back in an effort to index their already digitized archives. Yesterday’s announcement takes this initiative to a whole new level as Google itself attempts to digitize as much content from print archives as possible.

According to the AP, Google has said it will foot the bill for copying the archives of any publisher that wants to take part in the initiative as long they permit Google to display the content for free. Participating publishers will reportedly receive a cut of the revenue generated from advertisements displayed with the archives.

When Google began indexing digitized archives in 2006, all archives were searchable via the Google News Archive. According to the official Google blog, content scanned by Google will appear alongside the already-digitized material from publications like the New York Times as well as from archive aggregators, and will be marked "Google News Archive."

According to the Washington Post, which was part of the original digitized archives initiative in 2006, Google will launch the service with millions of articles already scanned and will be continuously updating them.