Google Lets News Figures Fire Back

People who want to talk back to the press received a major invitation from Google News yesterday when it announced a plan to post user comments alongside links to news articles, ars technica reports. But only people and groups specifically mentioned in the articles will be allowed into Google’s new peanut gallery, which will open its doors later in this week.

How Google will vet these comments for pranksters remains to be seen, especially since its algorithm-heavy system seems prime for infiltration by clever bloggers. And how smaller newspapers will compete against a company that excerpts articles alongside exclusive online commentary is also unknown; one group of angry Belgian journals has already sued and beaten Google for copyright infringement.